





*r * r r.n *1 






































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A 


LIVING FAITH. 



GEORGE S. MERRIAM. 


“ We know in part, and we prophesy in part; 
but when that which is perfect is come, then 

that which is in part shall be done away. 

And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; 
but the greatest of these is love.” 



BOSTON: 

LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 


381 Washington Street. 


1876. 





Copyright, 1876, 

By GEORGE S. MERRIAM. 




RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE! 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 




CONTENTS, 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION.. 

I. Religion in the Future.]3 

II. “Not to destroy, but to fulfill’’ ... 19 

III. Love as a Supreme Idea.26 

IV. The Study of Theology.32 

V. Christianity and Natural Science . . .39 

VI. The Substance of Religion . . . 47 

VII. Beginning a Christian Life.52 

VIII. The Simplicity of It. 58 

IX. An Old-fashioned Virtue.63 

X. The Neglect of Worship . . . . • 71 

XI. Democracy and Religion.78 

XII. A Man of the People.87 

XIII. The Inner Witness.92 

XIV. The Teaching of the Spirit .... 100 

XV. God known through Man.107 

XVI. “As WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS” .... 114 

XVII. The Beneficence of Justice.119 

XVIII. The Wrath of God.123 

XIX. A Dying Belief.133 

XX. The Spirit of Judaism.151 

XXL The Relation of Christ to Judaism . . . 159 

XXII. The Universal Spirit.167 

XXIII. The Upbuilding of Faith.174 











IV 


CONTENTS 


XXIV. The Testimony of Christ . . , . 181 

XXV. The Severity of Christ. 188 

XXVI. A Great Heresy. 194 

XXVII. A Present God.202 

XXVIII. Inspiration.. . . 213 

XXIX. The Ever-present Spirit.221 

XXX. The Revelation of Christ .... 229 

XXXI. Christian Union. 241 

XXXII. The Living Revelation. 248 

XXXIII. The Kindness of Nature .253 

XXXIV. Waiting on God.260 

XXXV. The Revealing Day.265 

XXXVI. The Walk to Emmaus .272 

XXXVII. The Soul’s Birthday.280 




INTRODUCTION 


The papers which make up this volume were originally 
published, either as editorials or communications, in “ The 
Christian Union.” They were written from time to time, 
during a period of nearly five years, each as an indepen¬ 
dent article, and with no thought of ever bringing them 

7 O O O 

together. In arranging them for this book, I have aimed 
to follow as far as possible a natural order of thought; but 
a volume thus prepared must of necessity lack something 
of the symmetry which belongs to a work planned and exe¬ 
cuted as an individual whole. 

One who writes to meet the requirements of a weekly 
newspaper is under sharp limitations of space and time. 
He is obliged to bring his treatment of the most important 
subject within a compass so brief as to compel the omis¬ 
sion of explanations and qualifications that deserve a place, 
and must trust to a future recurrence to the subject to 
remedy this defect. He must write hastily, and is there¬ 
fore likely to sometimes write crudely. I fear that these 
articles — which are reproduced with but few and slight 
changes, chiefly verbal, from their original form — are not 
altogether free from another fault to which newspaper 
writing is especially liable. I mean an excessive dogma¬ 
tism, a positiveness of opinion not justifiable upon themes 
so great that we can at best only partially comprehend 
them, and not becoming in view of the differences among 


VI 


INTRODUCTION. 


equally sincere and thoughtful men. I think the imper¬ 
sonal style of editorial writing has a tendency to betray 
one into this sin of dogmatism. A man who in his own 
person would speak modestly enough may forget his mod¬ 
esty a little when he is behind the imposing mask of the 
editorial “ We.” The writer, as well as his reader, may 
half-forget that his words deserve only the weight of a 
single individual’s opinions. 

In general, there are I think two somewhat opposing 
influences which one feels when writing with strong con¬ 
viction and on moral questions. There is, on the one 
hand, an impulse to modesty and diffidence of expression, 
when one considers the differences amounting to contra¬ 
diction between men who are alike possessed of learning, 
genius, and spiritual feeling. There is, too, a profound 
impulse to humility in the consciousness, startling at times, 
of how immeasurably the sweep of our faculties falls below 
the themes to which we apply them. Such influences urge 
one to speak with great diffidence and distrust of his own 
judgment. Yet, on the other hand, convictions which are 
the outgrowth of one’s deepest mental and spiritual life 
require in their expression something of the full assurance 
with which they are inwardly held. Acknowledging our 
liability to err, acknowledging the deference due to those 
who with equal sincerity hold different opinions, there yet 
are positive beliefs which bear themselves in with inspiring 
and uplifting certainty upon the soul. There are concep¬ 
tions of human life, and the Divine life encompassing it, 
which in the higher moments of existence declare them¬ 
selves with profound assurance of their truth, and as sources 
of the deepest joy and peace. In less exalted moods, one 
finds himself strong and successful in proportion as he can 
hold to these conceptions and live by them. Beliefs of 


INTRODUCTION. 


Yll 


this character have to him in whose experience they are 
wrought out the authority of “ Thus saith the Lord.” He 
may by no means assume to impose them as by that au¬ 
thority upon the minds of others. He must recognize that 
the glorious realities of which he has caught a glimpse may 
reveal themselves to other men under different aspects and 
widely different forms of intellectual expression. But, in 
bearing witness to the truth as he sees it , he must deliver 
the message with some such strong emphasis as that with 
which it has come to him. 

Without claiming for the entire contents of this volume 
any such certitude on my own part, I may yet say in re¬ 
gard to the leading ideas of these papers that they are the 
expression of convictions clear and intense. They embody 
what is to me “ a living faith.” I say this because it is 
my only apology for departing, as I sometimes have done, 
from the opinions of many whom I revere and of some 
whom I love. It is with genuine pain that I have ever 
done this, and my justification to them and to myself is 
simply this: I have said what to my best judgment ap¬ 
peared true and helpful; if I have spoken amiss, it is my 
misfortune ; but if I had refused to speak what to me 
seemed true and suited to the needs of men, it would have 
been a grievous fault. 

I wish to add a word as to the general purpose with 
which I have written. My attempt has been not only to 
say what was true, but to say such things and in such a 
way as should help those who might read toward a higher 
manhood. I have felt that it is hardly worse to teach 
error than to teach truth in such ways as are likely to in¬ 
jure men’s moral growth. It seems to me that in regard 
to moral questions no one has fully apprehended the truth 
until he has apprehended that quality in it which is ser- 


yin 


INTRODUCTION. 


viceable to mankind. Truth may indeed disclose itself at 
first in negations; its entry may be through the downfall 
of the beliefs by which a man has lived and on which his 
life seems to depend. When any belief, however dear, 
ceases to commend itself to a man’s best judgment as true, 

I hold that for him there is but one course — to manfully 
let it go. But if he will wait patiently, if above all he will, 
amid his intellectual doubts and strivings, discipline him¬ 
self steadily in rightness and sweetness of character, I be¬ 
lieve he will at last find his new views, if they maintain 
themselves in his mind, ministering to a firmer strength 
and fuller joy than the old views afforded. But, until that 
element of moral helpfulness discloses itself, until he sees 
how the new truth fits itself to the practical wants of him¬ 
self not only but of other men, and tends to build them up 
in conscience and sympathy and spiritual feeling,—until 
then I do not see that he has any right to proclaim his be¬ 
liefs to others. Most certainly he may not honestly go on 
avowing opinions which he no longer holds, but it does 
not appear to me that he has any call to actively teach 
views of which he has not yet learned the moral applica¬ 
tion. All highest truth is medicinal; it enlarges and in¬ 
spires and cheers; and no man rightly administers truth 
who does not so teach as to make his hearers better men 
and women. 

One may err in proclaiming his crude half-views of 
truth, or in declaring even his ripened convictions in an 
unhelpful spirit and for mere self-gratification; but one 
may also err in failing to speak out, from timidity or from 
want of faith in the truth. Perhaps at the present time 
the former error is the more common of the two among 
those who are outside of the Church, and the latter among 
those within it. In one respect it seems to me there is 


INTRODUCTION. 


IX 


misjudgment on the part of many professional teachers of 
religion. They carefully seek to guard all those who are 
under their influence from all innovations of belief. But, 
so far as regards the more active-minded of their hearers, 
they are wholly powerless to exclude suggestions of the 
most radical innovations, which come from numberless 
sources outside of the Church. Change of belief is in the 
very air ; all strong and independent thinkers are more or 
less affected by it; books, reviews, newspapers teem with 
direct and indirect indications of the shifting tide of re¬ 
ligious opinion. It is idle and hopeless to oppose to this 
all-pervading influence the brutum fulmen of the pulpit’s 
ban against infidelity. The church might as well try to 
prevent children from growing into men and women, as to 
prevent the traditional beliefs of Christendom from under¬ 
going an immense change. The noble opportunity of the 
Church and of all teachers of religion is this: to so teach 
and administer the truth that with new intellectual con¬ 
ceptions shall blend those spiritual elements — the immor¬ 
tal trinity of faith, hope, love, — which are the soul of re¬ 
ligion. The way to hold men fast to religious belief is to 
find forms of belief which shall satisfy their intellectual 
and moral needs. The chief promotion of real infidelity 
comes through the enforcement in the name of religion of 
statements which shock the reason and the moral sense of 
mankind. And he who, laboring to reach for himself and 
for others a higher and more satisfying belief, is accused 
of sowing infidelity, might well reply, “It is not I that 
have troubled Israel! ” 

It is under the influence of such convictions as these that 
the following papers were written. The writer’s aim has 
been to seek the truth and the truth only, and, both in 
seeking for himself and in communicating to others, to 


X 


INTRODUCTION. 


strive for that temper of heart to which alone the truth 
is disclosed, and through which alone it can be imparted. 
There is one phrase of Paul’s worthy to be forever borne 
in mind by religious teachers — ‘ 4 Speaking the truth iri 
love.” Paul has another similar phrase — “ Faith which 
worketh by love.” That, I take it, means two things. 
First, it is when the soul has the genuine love-temper that 
its faith-power — its power to see the invisible — is strong. 
The man who loves sees truth that the unloving man for¬ 
ever misses. And, next, faith should “ work by love ” in 
imparting as well as in receiving. To effectively convey 
truth to men — truth which concerns the moral and spirit¬ 
ual nature — we must have such sympathy for them that 
we shall rightly read their wants, and fit what we give 
them to the very place that needs it. Then, and then only, 
will truth come to them as food, as warmth, as light, as the 
highest gift of God. 

As these papers have from time to time appeared, it 
has occasionally given me great pleasure to receive a word 
from some one to whom they had come as a welcome mes¬ 
sage. At one time it has been a woman who in silence 
and solitude had striven with the great problems of life, 
and who has found a ray of light and comfort in what it 
had been given me to say. At another time it has been 

a man who had carried within himself as a life-lono- secret 

© 

the hope of all-prevailing good which I had declared was 
to me a sacred faith. And again it has been a missionary, 
who in long years amid tropical forests and mountains, 
with no human society save that of the degraded race for 
whom he was laboring, had had revealed to him I doubt 
not larger truth than I have found, and who heard with 
sympathy the echo of his own thoughts. And as this book 
goes on its way, I am glad to believe that here and there 


INTRODUCTION. 


XI 


will be one who in reading it will respond to its utterances 
and be moved by the sense of a common hope and faith. 
To all such I inscribe it, in reverent and glad recognition 
of that bond of sympathy which unites those who may not 
see each other on earth, and in anticipation of that life 
where we shall meet eye to eye as well as heart to heart. 






















































































. ^ 







A LIVING FAITH. 


i. 


RELIGION IN THE FUTURE. 

If we take a wide survey of the present state 
of religious thought, we see a chaos of conflicting 
opinions. Yet we find ourselves impelled to be¬ 
lieve that out of this confusion there will, sooner 
or later, arise some settled agreement, some defi¬ 
nite basis. For ourselves, we believe that this 
faith of the future will be Christian, by virtue 
both of its historical connection and of its alle¬ 
giance to Christ. But not improbably it will be 
Christianity under a new aspect. We believe 
that it will retain the great central truths that 
have always been the heart of Christianity. God 
and Christ and immortality; all the sweet and 
comforting assurances of the Gospel; all its ener¬ 
gizing moral impulses, — whatever, in a word, 
has stayed and strengthened the followers of the 
Lord Jesus throughout the ages — will, in its 
substance, be held more firmly and realized more 



14 


A LIVING FAITH. 


vividly than ever before. The outer husk of 
dogmatic statement may wither or change, but 
only to show more clearly the vital, underlying 
fact. Farther, the outward instrumentalities of 
religion will, doubtless, be largely altered; not 
only our creeds, but our modes of worship and of 
church government, all the appliances for practi¬ 
cally reaching men, will be changed in the direc¬ 
tion of greater efficiency. The details of these 
modifications cannot be foreseen. But we look 
with confidence for a special prominence of cer¬ 
tain spiritual qualities in the coming development 
of religion. 

We believe that one of its qualities will be the 
truth-seeking spirit, — the love of truth for its 
own sake. That is a wholly different thing from 
love for one’s own beliefs. The essence of gen¬ 
uine love of truth is willingness to learn. Its 
temper is not self T confidence, but humility. It 
is open-eyed, receptive. It holds truth so sacred 
that it will sacrifice comfort, ease, peace of mind, 
rather than rest in a delusion. The religion that 
includes this element must have the fullest re¬ 
spect for sincere opinion. It must place abso¬ 
lutely no limit on the honest search for truth. 
Thus far, freedom of opinion has been conceded 
only as a social right, not as a Christian right. 
Heretical opinion has ceased to bring civil penal- 


RELIGION IN THE FUTURE. 


15 


ties, but it still excludes men from the churches. 
We must go beyond that. The time is coming 
when it will be recognized that to think with 
perfect honesty — that is, with perfect freedom 
— is not only a right, but a Christian duty. 
When that is fully understood, exclusion from 
the Church for opinion’s sake will be unknown. 

There will be present, too, a deep element of 
faith. Faith is the soul’s consciousness of its 
Divine relationship and exalted destiny. It is 
the recognition by man’s higher nature of sources 
of comfort and hope beyond anything that sense- 
knowledge discloses. It is the consciousness of a 
Divine Father toward whom goes out all that is 
deepest in affection and highest in moral aspira¬ 
tion ; it is the premonition of a future life of 
which the best attainment here is but the twi¬ 
light promise. In our day the sudden and vast 
revelation of material wonders unsteadies and 
dims for the moment the spiritual sight; but 
the stars will shine out clear again. Those who 
come after us will have not less, but more faith 
than we. 

The truth-seeking spirit and the spirit of faith, 
instead of being opposed, are in the deepest har¬ 
mony. The man whose faith is most genuine is 
willing to have its assertions tested by the sever¬ 
est scrutiny. And the passion for truth has un- 


16 


A LIVING FAITH. 


derlying it a profound conviction that what is 
real is best; that when we get to the heart of 
things we shall find there what we most need. 
Faith is false to itself when it dreads truth, and 
the desire for truth is prompted by an inner 
voice of faith. 

Above all, the religion of the future will be a 
love-religion. That element will be central and 
sovereign. Raised to its rightful place, we can¬ 
not tell how deeply it will change our present 
systems of thought, our ideals of character, our 
social usages, the whole inner and outer life of 
society. We know that, so far as its power ex¬ 
tends, it will sweeten and brighten all things. 
It will make religion joyful, filling the soul with 
a new sense of the transcendent glory and loveli¬ 
ness of God. When we not only say, but know, 
that God is love, our whole vision of time and 
eternity changes ; the universe is transfigured be¬ 
fore our eyes. Nor, with such a change, shall 
we lose in energy and moral fiber. True love is 
of all principles the most active and mighty. Its 
counterfeits and its lower forms may be weak ; 
but love which has the divine quality is majestic, 
strong to suffer, all-powerful to conquer evil. 
When men know something of what love is in 
God, and catch its inspiration in their own hearts, 
they will be strong enough to remake the social 


RELIGION IN THE FUTURE. 


17 


world. Such work is to be done by men for each 
other, as has hardly yet been thought of. The 
disposition which was Christ’s, the giving up of 
life to the service of others, is to so spread among 
men that it will inspire a benevolence, a habit 
of brotherly feeling and action, a sweetness and 
health in the whole social body, that we have not 
yet dreamed of. 

When shall these things be ? God only knows. 
But the signs of them are among us. The truth 
was never sought more earnestly than a host of 
men are seeking it now. The distressing doubts 
that thousands are grappling with are the birth- 
pangs of a higher faith. The idea of a God of 
love and a religion of love is being so developed 
and so received that it is almost like a new reve¬ 
lation. In different nations, and under countless 
forms, we see the promise and beginning of a prac¬ 
tical, many-sided benevolence, a brotherly sym¬ 
pathy and helpfulness, such as was never seen 
before on so wide a scale. And these signs are 
worthy to be trusted. 

On a day in early spring, when the woods are 
bare and the fields brown, when the earth is 
mantled with gray clouds and chilled with raw 
mist, we ask, “ Where is the summer that was 
promised ? ” But looking closer, we see upon the 
orchards a faint flush of springing buds, and on 
2 


18 


A LIVING FAITH. 


sheltered hill-sides the grass is green ; under the 
dead leaves we may find the arbutus, and now 
and then the note of a blue-bird pierces the air. 
Summer is coming ! And God’s summer is com¬ 
ing among men. Not to-morrow, perhaps, nor 
next year, but in His good time, surer than the 
apple-blossoms of next June, fairer than the 
brightest day on which the sun ever rose. 


II. 


“NOT TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFILL.” 

In the methods by which Jesus wrought out His 
work on earth, nothing is more striking than His 
treatment of the old Jewish system. He found 
the Jews subject to a most elaborate code of pre¬ 
cepts. Their aim was to live by the statute- 
book. Their test of a religious life was conform¬ 
ity to the thousand various regulations laid down 
in the books of Moses. The final result of 
Christ’s work was to absolutely supersede this 
whole legal system. Not only did the ceremo¬ 
nial part of it disappear altogether; its multitude 
of moral precepts were all replaced by a single 
great principle. The Jew had been held to a 
minutely prescribed routine of life. The Chris¬ 
tian was set absolutely free from everything but 
the law of love. Thus Christ’s work was one of 
liberation. 

It is very significant, then, that at the outset, 
tin the Sermon on the Mount, He said : “ Think 
not that I am come to destroy the law or the 
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to ful- 


20 


A LIVING FAITH. 


fill.” That utterance rightly understood is the 
key to Christ’s method as a moral reformer. 
“ The law and the prophets ” was the compre¬ 
hensive term for the Old Testament code, which 
the Jew acknowledged as binding upon his con¬ 
science. It was his professed rule of conduct. 
It represented the obligations of justice, temper¬ 
ance, chastity, honesty, obedience to parents, 
good citizenship, the maintenance of religion, 
the worship of Jehovah. These were the great 
elements that underlay the old Jewish system, 
and gave it its value. And what Christ virtu¬ 
ally said was: “ Do not think that I am going 
to set you free from the moral restraints you 
have been under. On the contrary, I am going 
to give to them a wider scope and a weightier 
sanction. I am going to show you that the law 
of God goes deeper than you have understood; 
that it touches you not only at the points where 
you have already felt it, but in your inmost 
thoughts, and at every moment. You have 
rightly been taught not to commit murder; but 
I tell you further that every thought of hate par¬ 
takes of the guilt of murder. You have received 
the truth that adulterous acts are offensive to 
God; know also that impure thoughts are wick¬ 
edness. Your law has restrained by legal forms 
the severing of the marriage bond; but you 


NOT TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFILL. 21 


ought not to sever it at all.” So, everywhere, 
He puts in place of the formal precept the prin¬ 
ciple which includes it and goes beyond it. 

This was Christ’s characteristic and almost 
universal method. He scarcely ever assailed the 
externalities on which men set an excessive 
value. He came among a generation of literal- 
ists, formalists. The teachers of the people held 
the best elements of the religion of their fathers 
in a servile way. A thing was right or wrong in 
their eyes according as it was allowed or forbid¬ 
den by the express words of the law of Moses 
or his later commentators ; and they did not ask 
whether it accorded with the spirit of justice and 
mercy which inspired the special precepts of the 
law. But Christ did not set to work to break 
down the old sense of obligation ; largely slavish 
and superstitious though it was, yet it did bear 
some fruit of right living ; it was a prop and 
stay to men’s consciences; and Christ’s method 
was not to knock away the props, but to culti¬ 
vate the roots so that the tree should become 
strong enough to stand alone. With Him free¬ 
dom was not the abrogation of law, but the sub¬ 
stitution of a higher law, — the law of the spirit 
of life , in place of subjection to a formal code. 

The time in which we are now living is one of 
rapid transition in religious systems. The old is 


22 


A LIVING FAITH. 


fast passing away. Institutions and beliefs that 
have long been sacred are ceasing to impress the 
minds of men. The change is far greater than 
the surface shows. Externally, things are much 
as they were; great churches profess the old 
creeds as solemnly as ever; apostolical succes¬ 
sion, baptism, church membership, all the forms 
and methods of external religion, seem to play as 
imposing a part as they ever did. But revolu¬ 
tion is working rapidly. The creeds stand, but 
men do not believe in them as they once did. 
The authority of the clergy is overshadowed by 
the influence of newspapers and books. The 
clergy themselves, though the most conservative 
body in the community, are deeply penetrated 
with new ideas. The secular element in life — 
by which we designate that which is not in form 
and avowedly religious — daily assumes larger 
proportions. The deepest spiritual feeling is 
finding for itself new forms both of thought and 
of practical expression. In a word, the whole 
conception of religion in the minds of men is be¬ 
ginning to undergo a vast change, whose precise 
extent no prudent man will attempt to foretell; 
a change wrought by a multitude of causes, some 
good and some evil, and with results of mingled 
good and evil accordingly. 

Now, one thing is to be borne in mind by 


NOT TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFILL. 28 


those who, as teachers of others, are at once feel¬ 
ing this process of change in themselves and deal¬ 
ing with it in those whom they teach. It is, the 
supreme necessity of working as Christ worked — 
so as not to weaken the sense of moral obligation, 
but to reinforce it. Here is the test of whether 
liberty comes to a man as blessing or as curse: 
Does it make him better? Is conscience more 
sovereign, is sympathy more active ? Has he a 
stronger sense of the claims life makes upon him ? 
Is he more useful in the family and in the com¬ 
munity ? Does he grow in moral stature, in ear¬ 
nestness and fidelity and sweetness of disposition ? 
If his liberty leads him towards these things, it 
is the highest blessing. If it lowers the tone of 
conscience ; if it begets indifference and indo¬ 
lence ; if it leaves him an easier prey to the 
lusts of the flesh and the drawings of pleasant 
self-indulgence — then he may well envy him 
who even in servile fashion plods along the path 
of duty. Bondage to superstition is not the worst 
thing; the liberty that casts off the law of God 
is far worse. 

The sense of external authority is rapidly 
waning in the religious world. The work to be 
done is to educate men into fitness for freedom. 
There is far less need to declaim against dogma 
and church authority and ritualism, than to 


24 


A LIVING FAITH. 


supply men from purer and fuller sources with 
what these instrumentalities have imperfectly fur¬ 
nished. The systems that are dying did build 
men up, in no small number and in no low de¬ 
gree, in the essential virtues of character. Our 
part is to see that the new generation be stronger 
and better men than their predecessors. Fear 
of hell is weakening: we must supply its place 
with nobler motives. Reverence for church and 
altar is waning: men must be taught to see God 
everywhere. The whole machinery, Romish or 
Protestant, of a creed to which men must assent 
on pain of damnation, visible church ordinances 
which are the special channels of God’s grace, 
conditions of salvation which consist not so much 
in rightness of life as in intellectual conviction 
and mystical experiences and outward observ¬ 
ances — all this is fading out of the belief of 
the world as the mists of a summer morning melt 
away before the sun. The work of demolition 
goes on almost of itself. The service for true 
laborers is less to clear away the old than to 
plant the new. Above all things, men need to 
be impressed with the transcendent importance 
of personal character, and with the universal and 
intimate presence of God. They need to be 
made to feel the intrinsic evil of wrong-doing 
more keenly than of old they shuddered at a 


NOT TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFILL. 25 


hell of fire. They must be attracted toward the 
glory of a life of love more strongly than any 
material reward can draw them. They must be 
so educated that the Divine presence shall be felt 
in all loveliness of nature or beauty of man’s 
works ; that Christ shall be seen wherever His 
human brethren are; and that in ever}' struggle 
between good and evil the soul shall feel itself in 
the presence of God and in reach of His help. If 
men are trained to live thus they are ready for 
freedom, and true freedom — the liberty of the 
sons of God — will surely come to them. 


III. 


LOVE AS A SUPREME IDEA. 

The strongest force of an age is often to be 
found in a single idea, held so widely, so tena¬ 
ciously, and so ardently, that it comes to domi¬ 
nate over the whole inner and outer life of men. 
Systems of opinion, social usages, individual char¬ 
acter, all get their main impulse from this central 
force. 

Thus, in the earliest days of the Church, there 
sprang into life the idea of the direct and living 
union of the soul with Christ. That idea worked 
like leaven. It came to be felt that where this 
powerful principle of faith existed the old cere¬ 
monials were not needed, and the ceremonial 
system was sloughed off. Since faith was possi¬ 
ble to the Gentile no less than to the Jew, the 
barrier between the two melted away, and from 
the religion of a petty nation Christianity be¬ 
came the religion of a world. 

So, again, there grew up in the Middle Ages 
the conception of a visible kingdom of God on 
earth, embodied in the Catholic Church. It 


LOVE AS A SUPREME IDEA. 


27 


made the external power of the Church greater 
than that of any secular kingdom. It set an iron 
wall around the thought and speculation of the 
time. Both for good and for evil, its power af¬ 
fected the whole frame-work of society and the 
whole operation of the human mind. 

Still later, there was developed in Calvinism 
a strong and vivid conception of the Divine Su¬ 
premacy. Where that conception took possession 
of men, it determined their whole view of the 
universe. Under its influence they readily ac¬ 
cepted beliefs which would never have been en¬ 
tertained except under such an impulse. A new 
type of character was created. The men whom 
Calvinism educated wrought new forms of gov¬ 
ernment and society. In their own lives they 
showed qualities striking and unique ; a heroism, 
an austerity, a humility toward God, and a cour¬ 
age toward men, elsewhere unequaled. 

We might enumerate other instances. In our 
own time the idea of the supremacy of physical 
law has been highly developed. The effects of 
the habit of mind thereby produced are seen in 
every direction. Largely for good, but somewhat 
for evil, this idea of physical law is making its 
mark on the whole life of the time. But, recog¬ 
nizing its great power, we believe there is appar¬ 
ent the growth of an idea of a wholly different 


28 


A LIVING FAITH. 


kind, and of yet deeper influence. That idea 
represents the governing force of the universe, 
not as inscrutable Power, or unconscious Law, 
but as Divine Love. 

Something approaching to this conception is 
indeed involved in all religion worthy to be called 
such. The idea is nobly expressed in the Old 
Testament Scriptures. In the New, it is set 
forth in terms whose strength can never be sur¬ 
passed. The life whose history is the basis of 
the New Testament is itself the highest expres¬ 
sion of Love as the law of all things. The lives 
of Christian men, from that day to this, have wdth 
unceasing repetition shadowed forth more or less 
distinctly the same truth. But never, we may 
say, since the days of Christ and the Apostles, 
has it been so distinctly and fully recognized as 
it is now coming to be, that the whole of human 
existence is ruled by Infinite and Omnipotent 
Love ; and that the spirit of love is worthy to 
be received by man as the supreme law of his 
life. 

The simplest words may contain this idea, and 
have contained it. John said it all, when he 
wrote “ God is Love.” Yet no amplitude of 
human language can fully set it forth. Nor can 
it be adequately received merely by the intellect. 
As with all great moral ideas, so preeminently 


LOVE AS A SUPREME IDEA. 29 

with this, it must become an experience of the 
heart and life before it is understood. 

In all this there is in one sense nothing new. 
The truth so revealed and experienced has been 
known to believers ever since Christ said “ My 
peace I leave with you.” What is new is this, 
that what has been reached through feeling, and 
as a matter of private experience, is now, as 
it never was before, distinctly recognized and 
set forth as the sum and substance of relig¬ 
ious truth. It is the saddest thing in history 
that the truth which Christ lived and died to re¬ 
veal has been so disowned and dishonored by 
those professing to transmit His teachings. There 
never was a time in the last eighteen hundred 
years when religious teachers were not burying 
out of sight the Gospel of Christ with their own 
rubbish. Mountains of wood and straw and stub¬ 
ble have been heaped up over the simple revela¬ 
tion of God that was made in Christ. 

From all this a great change is taking place. 
There seems to be almost a second birth of Chris¬ 
tianity in the world. And this is its substance, 
— the supremacy of Love. Love is the law of 
man’s existence, and of God’s existence no less. 
The human soul, in whatever state or place, is 
God’s child. God is the universal Father, and 
the whole physical world, the entire circum- 


30 


A LIVING FAITH. 


stances of the race, the whole course of human 
events, are but the appliances of a Father’s love. 
The mysterious energies of Nature, the more 
mysterious forces of human feeling and human 
will, the whole structure of things seen and un¬ 
seen, past, present, and to come, are created and 
controlled by Infinite Love. And it is by mak¬ 
ing this love-principle supreme in the soul, and 
carrying it out into all human activities, that man 
is to reach his highest possibilities. 

The full effects of such a belief, taking wide 
possession of the minds of men, cannot yet be 
seen. But it is easy to see that it will work as 
at once the mightiest and the noblest moral force 
that the world has known. It will work in every 
direction. Our entire theologies will be recast 
by it. All the arrangements of society, its meth¬ 
ods of business, its forms of government, the re¬ 
lations of men to each other as individuals and as 
classes, will be remodeled, perhaps revolution¬ 
ized. For in a world socially constituted as ours 
is, there can be no force so revolutionary as the 
true spirit of love. So, all our ways of thinking 
will be largely changed. Our philosophy of man 
and of nature will be reconstructed. Art will 
receive a higher inspiration than ever before. 
Literature will rise to nobler aims and methods. 
And as the highest outcome of all, individual 


LOVE AS A SUPREME IDEA. 31 

character, the daily lives of men and women and 
children, will take on a sweetness, a purity, a 
moral beauty and loveliness, so that what have 
been the rarest exceptions will become the com¬ 
mon rule. 

To some this may seem a rhapsody or a dream. 
To us it is matter of sober conviction and joyful 
expectation. We do not look to see such changes 
instantly wrought. A world is not regenerated 
in a day. But it is ours to look across the un¬ 
known years to the radiant future. Its outlines 
rise clear before us, and they run unbroken into 
the very ways our feet are now treading. We 
stand on the threshold. Still the Divine word 
of “Patience” comes to us, but when Patience 
leans on clear and certain Hope, her step is light. 
A moral force is disclosing itself in the minds of 
men, transcending all that has gone before. It 
is the clear recognition and sense of the Divine 
Love as the supreme power of the universe. In 
that truth, fully seen and felt, is the power to 
make all things new. 


IV. 


THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY. 

It is the fashion of the day in some quarters to 
deride theology. One would suppose from much 
that is said that it was taking its place with as¬ 
trology and alchemy ; its object a chimera, and 
its methods folly. 

Theology is man’s knowledge of God, ex¬ 
pressed in intellectual forms. If there is no 
God, or if He is inaccessible to human knowl¬ 
edge, then theology should be ranked with the 
search for the philosopher’s stone. But if there 
is a God, and if man’s highest estate lies in 
knowledge of Him and communion with Him, 
then theology, as dealing with the highest truth, 
is the noblest of all sciences. 

To attack theology in the abstract because 
special schemes of theology have been faulty is 
not reasonable. If the science of medicine, in a 
particular time or place, is found to be defective, 
a wise man will not say that men should cease 
to study medicine ; he will urge them to study it 
by better methods. So, where theology has 


THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY. 


33 


fallen into false methods and conclusions, the 
thing to be done is not to abandon, but to im¬ 
prove it. 

It would be easy and interesting to show his¬ 
torically how elevating and beneficent has been 
the study of Christian theology. But we prefer 
to look forward, rather than to dwell upon the 
past. Theology is a progressive science. It 
shares the onward impulse which in our age stirs 
in every department of human life. How is it to 
improve its methods ? One answer at least can 
be given with confidence. 

Theology has hitherto taken its materials from 
too narrow a field. Its subject is God and His 
relations with man. It should study the whole 
revelation which God has made of Himself — in 
other words, it should study whatever God has 
done, and whatever He is doing. 

But, is not the Bible the only authoritative rev¬ 
elation? Let the Bible itself be questioned as 
to that. If it makes this claim — if it shuts us 
from every other source, then those who respect 
its authority may assume it to be the sole source 
of knowledge. But if it sends us . to a Living 
God; if it sends us to the outward world — to 
the evolutions of Providence — and condemns 
men for not studying God in nature, then with 
what propriety shall we shut men up from the 


34 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ever-living and .active God, to the record God of 
history ? “ The heavens declare the glory of 

God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” 
“ The invisible things of Him from the creation 
of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, even His eternal 
power and Godhead.” “ When it is evening, ye 
say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red ; 
and in the morning, it will be foul weather to¬ 
day, for the sky is red and lowering. Ye can 
discern the face of the sky ; but can ye not dis- 
cernThe signs of the times ? ” 

Man himself is made in the image of God. 
The visible world, the course of human history, 
man’s moral and social nature, are instinct and 
replete with the Divine presence and power. 
God’s footsteps are everywhere. Only as we 
everywhere search for them with reverent eyes 
can we reach “ the fullness of Him that filleth all 
in all.” 

Through many centuries, Christian theolo¬ 
gians acknowledged but one source of truth, au¬ 
thority ; they used but one method, logic. The 
decisions of the Church were final; it remained 
only to draw from them whatever logical conclu¬ 
sions human ingenuity could work out. The 
whole theology of the Middle Ages consisted in 
this. 


THE STUDY OP THEOLOGY. 


85 


Protestantism finds a purer fountain of truth 
in the sacred Scriptures. But these have been 
sometimes used in a way which it is evident was 
never intended. That is, they have been as¬ 
sumed as being, in their literal construction, the 
exclusive source of Christian knowledge. Such 
an assumption ignores the teaching of the Bible 
itself; it ignores that most precious promise of 
Christ, that His Spirit should abide with His peo¬ 
ple always, and should guide them into all truth. 
Romanism wrests that promise into superstition; 
Protestantism, too often, empties it of its mean¬ 
ing altogether. To the earnest and humble 
seeker for truth, it should bring a world of com¬ 
fort and assurance. It is a pledge that, as he 
feels everywhere for truth, God’s hand is reached 
out to meet his. It binds Christian trust to 
Christian freedom; it is the Lord’s commission to 
His people to go fearlessly forward and take pos¬ 
session of the new realms of truth whither He 
will lead them. 

We say then, it is rational, and it is Christian, 
to look everywhere in the material and moral 
universe to find truth about God. Theology 
must come — and is coming — into a wider place. 
Hitherto, she has too often refused to listen to 
the other sciences, and has at the same time 
proclaimed her sovereignty over all. She must 


36 


A LIVING FAITH. 


lay down that barren scepter, and welcome in¬ 
stead the rich gifts which they will pour in upon 
her when she consents to learn of them. In es¬ 
pecial : 

Theology must be taught of natural science. 
She must recognize natural law as Divine law, 
and a revelation of Divine character. She may 
justly resist the usurpation by which material 
science, in its turn, claims the sole sovereignty, 
and treats the processes of matter as literal in¬ 
terpreters of soul-life. But toward all legitimate 
science the attitude of theology should be re¬ 
ceptive ; she should listen to this fresh message 
of the Creator, ready to rejoice in the new light 
and help it is sure to bring. 

History, again, is to minister richly to theol¬ 
ogy. Its influence is already profoundly felt. 
It is a relentless foe to false and arrogant as¬ 
sumptions. It cuts up by the roots the claim of 
Papal infallibility, and every other sort of human 
infallibility. Dogmas which have weighed down 
men’s souls, armed with the venerable sanctions 
of authority, are shown by the historian who 
traces their origin to be outgrowths of palpable 
error. And history is mighty to construct, as 
well as to destroy, belief. It brings to light, in 
all their majesty, those universal instincts of the 
soul which point to God and redemption and im- 


THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY. 87 

mortality. It shows how some beliefs have al¬ 
ways worked beneficently, and how other spe¬ 
cious doctrines have always proved will-o’-the- 
wisps, luring men to moral ruin. History gives 
a key to the Bible, unlocking new treasures; 
it sets a background to the sacred pictures, and 
fills them with meaning unsuspected before. 

Theology, again, is to make different account 
from what it has hitherto done of the revelation 
of God in man himself. It is to recognize the fact 
that whatever in the Divine nature is most glo¬ 
rious and most lovely can only be apprehended 
by us through the analogies of human character. 
Love in God is the counterpart of love in man. 
We can know anything of the Divine justice, 
purity, and tenderness only by first observing the 
same qualities in human beings. It may be said 
that God is revealed to us in Christ. But Christ 
Himself is understood by the kinship between 
Him and ourselves. We know the meaning of 
His tears at the sepulcher of Lazarus, because our 
tears have fallen over graves. 

Fully and heartily accepting this revelation of 
God through man’s moral nature, we must use 
that test in forming our conceptions of him. We 
must refuse to accept as an element of the Di¬ 
vine disposition anything which is in itself shock¬ 
ing to our highest sense of right. Theology must 


38 


A LIVING FAITH. 


recognize man’s moral sense as the voice of God, 
and fear to shock it as it would fear to deny the 
word spoken from heaven or written on tables 
of stone. 

Theology, in a word, should be the noblest 
and most comprehensive result of thought, and 
as such it must embrace the noblest fruits of 
all other studies. It must see God everywhere. 
“Not in this mountain nor at Jerusalem;” not 
only in the Church or in the Scriptures; but 
wherever the Lord manifests Himself, —in the 
glory of creation, in the historical development 
of the race, in the sweetest and purest human 
experiences, in the soul’s instinctive convictions 
of right, does He reveal himself to our under¬ 
standings and our hearts. 


Y. 


CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 

There prevails to some extent among religious 
people a disposition to judge theories strictly 
scientific in their nature upon theological grounds. 
Men who are unable to answer, or even to com¬ 
prehend, the wide array of facts and multiplex 
chain of reasoning by which Darwin, for example, 
supports his positions, take the strongest ground 
against these positions as hurtful and false. 

It might be a sufficient reply to opposition of 
this sort, that no opinion can, in the end, be 
hurtful unless it is false, and that the only right 
investigation of scientific truth and falsehood must 
be itself of a scientific nature. Every branch of 
knowledge has its own peculiar methods and laws, 
and has a right, within its own province, to insist 
on their use. The mathematician does not test 
his results by the evidence of the senses, nor 
does the artist judge the success of his painting 
by measuring its distances mathematically. So 
the student of geology, or physiology, or natural 
history, who has reached his results by long and 


40 


A LIVING FAITH. 


patient comparison of facts, may justly object 
when these results are spurned with contempt by 
those who know nothing of the ground he has 
traversed to reach them. 

But such general considerations are hardly 
strong enough to check the disposition we have 
spoken of. Men cling to their religious faith, 
and to all which seems to concern it, with a 
tenacity great in proportion to the importance of 
the subject. If anything appears to threaten the 
beliefs which are the foundations of their spiritual 
life, they will oppose it without regard to' fine 
lines of logic. The suspicion and dislike with 
which many religious men regard not only special 
scientific theories, but the whole spirit of modern 
science, is due to an impression that that spirit 
is in effect, if not in consciousness, working to 
destroy the beliefs on which religion rests. The 
feeling is natural and strong that whatever tends 
to such a result must be evil and unsound through¬ 
out, whether or not we can trace the falsehood 
step by step. 

But we believe that this impression of the ten¬ 
dency of science to overthrow religion is a doublv 
mistaken one. It rests, first, on a wrong estimate 
of the bearing of theories already propounded 
upon the essentials of Christian faith. A further 
and a worse mistake is the want of confidence 


CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 41 

that all honest investigation, in whatever di¬ 
rection, must, in the end, render clearer and 
brighter our conceptions of God and of His rela¬ 
tions to man. 

As to special theories already propounded, take 
for example that of Darwin. Let it be observed, 
by the way, that this is only a theory yet, only 
a “ perhaps,” still regarded with great doubt, at 
least in its application to man, by a large part 
of the scientific world. The same kind of study 
which suggested it may overthrow it. We may 
see repeated in its case what Huxley calls “ the 
tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful 
theory by an ugly fact.” But suppose the theory 
to be not overthrown, but confirmed by further 
investigation — what harm would it do to Chris¬ 
tianity ? The first obvious answer would be that 
it contradicts the Biblical account of creation. 
But as applied to such subjects, “ contradicting 
the Bible ” is a phrase of which religious men 
should have learned to be chary. It was used 
against Galileo and Copernicus. It was used 
against the early geologists. It was brought into 
the field with the utmost confidence against the 
first who opposed the belief in witchcraft. It is 
quite time the lesson were learned, that in inter¬ 
preting the Bible we must be largely guided by 
facts gained from outside sources. If new dis- 


42 


A LIVING FAITH. 


coveries seem to conflict with it, the rational way 
is to consider whether their admission is not con¬ 
sistent with the maintenance of all that is val¬ 
uable in the Scriptures. This process has been 
gone through with over and over again, in the 
case of witchcraft, in the case of successive ad¬ 
vances in theology, in regard to the foundations 
of modern science. Yet the Bible is as rich and 
as precious as ever. Why dread so much another 
possible modification of our view of it ? 

Again, the objection that theories like this 
shut God out of the universe seems very ill- 
grounded. For the fact of his agency is wholly 
untouched by the discussion ; its method only is 
in question. Is the creation of an embryo which 
will develop into a world, less divine than the 
creation of a world by a million successive inter¬ 
positions ? A man may be a Darwinian and an 
atheist at the same time, but he can just as well 
be a Darwinian without being an atheist. There 
is nothing in that theory that obliges him to get 
rid of God. 

Nor is there anything to destroy belief in im¬ 
mortality. Its conception stops short at the 
bound of this life, and goes not a step beyond in 
assertion or denial. The doctrine of immortality 
never rested on the discoveries of natural science. 
Now, as hitherto, it gets neither confirmation nor 


CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 43 

denial there. It rests on evidence of another 
sort. 

Be it observed, we are not maintaining the 
truth of Darwinism. That question we leave to 
the scientists, to whom it belongs, and who are 
yet in dispute over it. We say only this: that 
whatever conclusion be reached, we foresee noth¬ 
ing antagonistic to the essentials of Christian be¬ 
lief. We watch the discussion with an interest 
undisturbed by any apprehension of possible 
harm to our religious faith. 

We might, did space allow, take up other theo¬ 
ries propounded by science, and show how little 
their possible course is likely to shake the basis 
of Christian belief. That they may modify the 
details of the structure is not improbable. But 
this should be ground of hope rather than of 
dread. Science may shed its light on ways that 
religion has thus far found dark. 

That is a most poor and unworthy conception 
which finds religious truth only in one book, 
though that book is the Bible. There is no work 
of God that does not testify of him. Of old the 
starry heavens bore in on the heart of the Psalm¬ 
ist, as of thousands who found no voice to tell it, 
a profound sense of the glory of Jehovah. The 
mountains, the trees, the winds, the lilies, the 
sparrows, have declared the greatness and good- 


44 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ness of God. The yearnings of the heart within 
itself have lifted men to a hope of immortality. 
The spectacle of human life in its thousand 
phases has taught men the excellence of virtue 
and the misery of sin. Nor are these lessons su¬ 
perseded by revelation. They take on a richer 
meaning when the Gospel has given us the key 
of the great mystery. And the Spirit, in leading 
us deeper into the truth, employs all the myriad 
facts of existence, all results of human labor and 
human thought, as its instrumentalities. 

The most characteristic activity of this age is 
the exploration of the physical universe. There 
is a great army of men, spread through every 
civilized land, who devote themselves to this 
search with an enthusiasm almost without par¬ 
allel. For every great and widely-known leader 
there are a thousand humble workers, gathering 
material, comparing results, building inch by inch 
the great highway of knowledge. They display 
an ardor that is daunted by no obstacle, a patience 
that a hundred failures cannot wear out. Few of 
them can become famous, still fewer of them can 
become rich, but all have their reward. That re¬ 
ward is the pleasure of noble activity, of knowl¬ 
edge dear for its own sake, and service done in 
some contribution to mankind’s great common 
store. The field in which they work is a mag- 


CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 45 

nificent one, embracing the atom too delicate for 
the sight, and the whole stellar universe. But 
more admirable than the wonders disclosed by 
microscope or telescope are the ardor, the cour¬ 
age, the genius, with which men pursue these 
secrets of nature. 

To say that so great a pursuit has drawbacks 
is but to say that it partakes of the imperfection 
of humanity. Those who look so largely on the 
physical side of things may 'sometimes underrate 
spiritual forces. In some, success may breed 
vanity ; and brilliant achievement may seduce 
into rash and ill-grounded advances. But, fairly 
regarded, and making all due allowance, this 
wide-spread and mighty enthusiasm of science is 
one of the noblest exhibitions of human activity 
ever made. 

To assume that this great force is likely on the 
whole to work adversely to Christianity is to in¬ 
sult Christianity even more deeply than science. 
And the earnest and thoughtful believer who has 
felt for himself the difficulties which in some 
directions environ belief, — the perplexities in 
the interpretation of the Word and in the work¬ 
ings of Providence, the mysteries with which the 
history of every man and of the race of men 
abound, —such a one, seeing the progress mak¬ 
ing in knowledge of the physical world, and pon- 


46 


A LIVING FAITH. 


dering the deep and subtle connection between 
mind and matter, may well look with longing 
and hope for farther light upon the ways of God 
to men, from this latest study of his works. 

Before any special idea set forth by scientists, 
we may well accept the words of Tyndall, upon 
the hypothesis of Darwin: “ Steady yourselves 
in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate 
triumph of truth which was expressed by old 
Gamaliel when he said: ‘ If it be of God ye can¬ 
not overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to 
naught.’ ” But looking at the whole course of 
modern Science, we must use a warmer tone, and 
welcome her as the friend of truth, and therefore 
the best friend of Christianity ; the helper of 
men, and so the servant of God. 


VI. 


THE SUBSTANCE OF RELIGION. 

Christianity, if it means anything, means char¬ 
acter. If it has any rightful place in the world, 
or any value to mankind, it is because it makes 
men purer, more honest, more loving, stronger in 
every virtue and every grace. 

This may seem too clear to need saying. But 
there is a wide misapprehension of Christianity, 
under which there is taught something really very 
different from this. The mistake finds expres¬ 
sion in popular modes of speech. Men say “ So- 
and-so is a church member,” or, “ He has ex¬ 
perienced religion,” and think that these phrases 
cover the whole of the matter. And, looking 
further, we find that in men’s minds Christianity 
means often something wholly different from the 
sum and total of a man’s character. It is thought 
of not as honesty, not as unselfishness, not as 
courage, not as fidelity, not as industry, not as 
being a good citizen and a good father and a good 
husband; nor as the sum of these and the like 
qualities. It is thought of rather as a peculiar 


48 


A LIVING FAITH. 


relation to God, certified by a special emotional 
experience, and outwardly expressed by a “ pro¬ 
fession of religion.” Sometimes one and some¬ 
times another feature is emphasized. With some 
it is “ having given one’s self to God,” by a sin¬ 
gle act of consecration. Others dwell on “the 
witness of the Spirit,” in an inward conviction of . 
their own acceptance. With very many a reliance 
on the merits of Christ is considered the supreme 
test. Belief in certain doctrines is another quali¬ 
fication. In one way or another a standard is set 
up, as decisive of a man’s whole destiny, in which 
the element of character — what the man is , in 
himself — is quite subordinate. 

Such conceptions are alien to the teachings of 
Christ and the spirit of his Gospel. The supreme 
message of that Gospel is a call to right living 
through the Divine help. Its revelation is of a 
God who gives his very life to draw his creat¬ 
ures into his own moral likeness. And, applied 
to ourselves, the meaning of Christianity is that 
we are to be Christ-like. In every relation of 
life, in every situation that arises, we are to aim 
at the right action. Christianity means to the 
merchant that he should be honest; to the judge 
it means that he should be just; to the servant, 
that he should be faithful; to the schoolboy, that 
he should be diligent; to the street-sweeper, that 


THE SUBSTANCE OF RELIGION. 


49 


he should sweep clean ; to every worker, that his 
work should be well done. It means that con¬ 
science should be law, and that conscience should 
be inspired by love. To be a Christian is to be 
a seeker of “ whatsoever things are true, what¬ 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely,” and all the rest of the noble catalogue. 
There is no social grace, no hearty good fellow¬ 
ship, no fidelity to comrades, no fine sense of 
honor, no service to the State, that does not be¬ 
long to Christianity. There is no faithfulness to 
useful work that is not a part of it. No genial 
disposition, no spiritual aspiration, no brotherly 
helpfulness, but has the stamp of God’s mint on 
it. There is nothing attractive in human nature 
that the Christian should not seek for ; and there 
is no good deed done by any man that is not, so 
far as it goes, in the line of Christianity. 

Further, Christianity carries with it this : it re¬ 
veals Omnipotent Love inspiring and lifting and 
transforming us. It gives us the assurance that 
in the end this Power will give us the victory 
over all our weakness and waywardness. It tells 
us that the ideal toward which here we strive with 
frequent failure and discouragement will one day 
be realized. Showing man that he is the child of 
God, it gives him a supreme hope and a supreme 
incitement. 


4 


50 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Consider what our Master taught us. He 
was, in himself, the perfect pattern of all moral 
strength and loveliness. In him virtue took its 
highest form — an ardent passion for the good of 
others. Read his words; they open springs of 
moral energy and enthusiasm in the heart. His 
face is wholly set toward goodness ; toward self¬ 
conquest, purity, ideal justice and truth and love; 
toward these qualities not alone as his individual 
possession, but to be developed in the whole hu¬ 
man race. In his companionship we breathe the 
air of a divine enthusiasm. If he made his own 
person central in his teachings, it was as the em¬ 
bodiment and source of this moral ardor. There 
is, indeed, an aspect of heavenly tranquillity to 
his work ; there is a record of communion with 
his friends that is full of the peace and rest of 
perfect love. But in that communion they en¬ 
tered most deeply into his spirit — the spirit that 
toils and suffers and dies for the sake of others. 
And when he left them, they went forth to carry 
on his work with an ardor in which their lives 
were consumed and the world was conquered. 

This was God’s revelation of himself to us. In 
Christ he translated his mysterious Divine nature 
into the language that we understand. Through 
Christ we get near to him, and know what he is 
like, and recognize his spirit when it stirs within 


THE SUBSTANCE OF RELIGION. 


51 


us. And all our religious knowledge and faith 
and experience have their right outcome in this, 
that we become like Christ. To solemnly con¬ 
secrate ourselves to him is well; to publicly join 
ourselves to his cause is well; to have the inward 
assurance of his fellowship is a blessed privilege. 
But the great necessity, the great business of life 
for every man, is to be habitually Christ-like in 
act and word and thought. Compared to this, 
church membership is nothing, doctrines are noth¬ 
ing, emotional experience is nothing. Character, 
in its highest sense, is everything. 


VII. 


BEGINNING A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

There are at this time [January, 18T5] a good 
many young people — more than usual, we sup¬ 
pose — who are setting out to lead a Christian 
life. We are thinking especially of those who 
have grown up in Christian homes, and had the 
teaching of church and Sunday-school, and to 
whom it is not a sudden or violent change when 
they deliberately make up their minds to be ser¬ 
vants of Christ. We want to say something to 
these young people to help them, if we can, in 
the noble and blessed thing they have under¬ 
taken. 

It will be a great help to you if at starting 
you have a right idea of what it really is to be a 
Christian. Do not think of it chiefly as some¬ 
thing by which you will be saved from hell and 
go to heaven when you die. Do not look at it 
first as something that is going to make you 
happy. Think, rather, that you are now aiming 
to be the best and noblest kind of a man or 
woman. You are going to be faithful and brave 


BEGINNING A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 


53 


and sweet-tempered and unselfish and lovable. 
You are going to think more of other people’s 
happiness than of your own. You are to live as 
a child of God, taking him for your Father, trust¬ 
ing him for everything, seeking through his help 
to be like him. In a word, you are to try to live 
as Jesus Christ lived. Never forget that to be 
a Christian is to be like Christ. 

Perhaps to some of you the Avords, “to be like 
Christ,” have a beautiful sound, but not a very 
clear meaning. Let us start at the beginning, 
then, with something so simple that we all can 
understand it. The first thing in being like 
Christ, and the great thing, is to be faithful to 
everything that Ave know is right. That means 
a great deal! It means something different at 
every hour. In school-time it means studying 
one’s lessons faithfully ; at play-time it means be¬ 
ing generous and gentle and fair; Avhen we are 
at home it is to be watchful for the comfort and 
happiness of every one in the house; Avhen Ave 
are tempted to any kind of evil, by other people 
or by our own thoughts, it is saying No, and 
sticking to it. It is a thousand such things as 
these that make up a Christian life. 

When, then, Ave stop to ask ourselves if Ave are 
on the right road, Ave are not to ask, “ Did I have 
the right feelings Avhen I joined the church ? ” 


54 


A LIVING FAITH. 


We are not to ask, “Do I know that my sins 
are forgiven ? Do I feel at peace and happy ? ” 
The question is, “Am I doing what I know is 
right? Am I honestly trying in every place to 
do as I know God would have me ? ” And wher¬ 
ever conscience tells us that we are coming short 
— whether it be in selfishness, or bad temper, or 
laziness, or whatever are our weak places — there 
we are to throw our whole strength, bracing up 
our strongest resolution, and earnestly asking 
God’s help. 

Do not think, because being a Christian covers 
the whole of life, that you must always be sober 
and thinking of religion. It is with God as it is 
with your father and mother. You want to be 
always a good son or daughter to them, but it 
does not trouble you that you cannot think of 
them always. Not only in sleep, but in play and 
study and in a great many other things you have 
not room for the conscious thought of your fa¬ 
ther and mother; and they do not expect you 
to have. Your Heavenly Father is not more un¬ 
reasonable or exacting than they. He has so 
made you that a great deal of the time you must 
be wholly occupied in the thing you.are doing, and 
with no room for religious thoughts in your head. 
And no one has such a right to be light-hearted 
and joyful and to throw himself into all innocent 


BEGINNING A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 


55 


pleasures, as the one who feels that this world is 
his Father’s house, and that all good and pleas¬ 
ant things are given by Him for the very purpose 
that his children should enjoy them. 

You will doubtless hear older people talk of 
experiences which you do not know much about. 
You may hear them speak of joys which you 
have never felt. There is a very deep joy in that 
sense of God in which he is more real and more 
lovely to our thoughts than the dearest earthly 
friend. But that feeling does not come to most 
people until they have seen a good deal of life, 
and been led in ways which most of you, younger 
ones, have not known. You should not be down¬ 
hearted if you do not have many such feelings, of 
great joy and peace, or even if you do not have 
them at all. But there is possible to you, from 
the first, a kind of companionship with God 
which is better than anything besides. You come 
into the companionship of God, and into his near 
love, whenever you do anything for the sake of 
another person. This was the blessedness of the 
life of Jesus, that he lived for other people, that 
his whole life was love. When you give up your 
own happiness for another person’s ; when, in¬ 
stead of seizing for yourself the sweet and pleas¬ 
ant things, you give them to another, you are 
standing by the side of Jesus. You are helping 


56 


A LIVING FAITH. 


in his work. You are then, whether you know 
it or not, in companionship with God. And as 
your whole life sets in this direction, and both in 
little things and great you are always thinking, 
not of your own happiness but how to make 
other people happier and better, you are becom¬ 
ing one with God. How much blessedness lies 
in that, how much good not for yourself only, 
but for all the great family in which you are a 
brother— no one can tell you. 

Set yourself then to this Christ-like life of 
love. Do not dwell too much on the happiness 
you are to find in it, but think how beautiful 
and good a thing it is in itself. Look at the 
most lovable people you know — the kindest 
and most unselfish people, those whom every¬ 
body is glad to see — and think how good it 
would be to be like them. As you read the life 
of Jesus, and see more and more how wonderful 
it was, remember that it is to such a life that he 
calls you. Think often that your success is to be 
measured at last by this, not how much money 
you have made, not how much you have been 
honored in the sight of men, but how nearly you 
have attained to the perfect manhood of Jesus. 

In all your efforts and all your thoughts, re¬ 
member that close about you is always the love 
of your Heavenly Father. When you are dis- 


BEGINNING A CHRISTIAN LIFE. 


57 


couraged, he is full of sympathy and patience. 
If you ever despair of yourself, he does not de¬ 
spair of you. If you turn your back on him, he 
waits for you and calls you until you turn again. 
If you sin, his eye is upon you, but it is with 
such a look as Jesus gave to Peter when he de¬ 
nied him. In every need your Father is close at 
hand. Your strength will be in resting on him. 
Prayer should be not making out a list of your 
wants, but taking a full, deep, sweet sense of 
your Heavenly Father’s presence. Learn to look 
at things as he looks at them. Learn to take 
a swift sense of his presence — his purity, his 
sympathy, his good will to all — in the midst of 
your occupations. Do not lay it on yourself as a 
burdensome duty; but when you are tempted, 
turn to the thought of him; when people vex 
you, think of his patience witli them ; when you 
are happy, think that he is happy in your joy. 

To be a Christian! It is the simplest thing in 
the world : it is to do right now. It is the great¬ 
est thing in the world: it covers more than we 
can think, more than the best of us can reach in 
a lifetime. It is a road whose beginning is close 
at our feet, and which reaches into the heavenly 
heights. 


VIII. 


THE SIMPLICITY OF IT. 

Two mistakes beset people in regard to the Chris¬ 
tian life. One is, that there is some great diffi¬ 
culty or mystery about the entrance upon it. 
The other is, that beyond the entrance there is 
hardly any difficulty or danger. Now, the truer 
way of taking it is just the opposite. Nothing in 
the world is simpler than beginning the Christian 
life ; but to persevere in it demands all the reso¬ 
lution and patience and persistence we possess. 

If we look at it in the simplest way, what is 
religion ? It is only trying by God’s help to do 
whatever is right. For a person who has not 
been doing that, the way to begin is perfectly 
simple. It is to give up and turn away from all 
willful wrong-doing; and to look constantly for 
sympathy and help to that loving God whom 
Christ has taught us to call our Father. It is to 
try to live in the spirit of Christ,— not only in 
purity and innocence, but in active love toward 
all living beings, and in dependence on the love 
of the Highest. To reach perfection in this life is 


THE SIMPLICITY OF IT. 


59 


a long, long task; but to set one’s face toward it, 
and make a beginning in it, is a simple matter. 

Indeed, in a Christian family, it constantly 
happens that a child makes some beginning and 
growth in this life from its very earliest years. 
There may come a time of conscious, deliberate 
acceptance of a Christian purpose ; but long be¬ 
fore that the child has probably been learning to 
be gentle and obedient and truthful and helpful, 
and to look to God as its friend. It is the nat¬ 
ural and right way that one should thus grow up 
a Christian, and that the beginning should be as 
far back and uncertain as the time when the 
child began to talk. In such a life there will 
naturally be some periods of rapid growth, some 
critical times when an important choice is made, 
— but, as a whole, the growth in Christian life 
should be a continuous process. 

There are very many, however, who either 
never were started right, or have in some way 
grown into evil or careless ways of life; and for 
these there needs to be a radical change. But 
no person whose present life is inspired b} r ear¬ 
nest, steady effort in the right direction ought 
ever to distress himself because, in looking back, 
he remembers no time of intense experience and 
conscious revolution in himself. We say this, 
knowing that there are persons who go mourn- 


60 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ing because they fear they have never had “ a 
change of heart,” when they ought to be rejoic¬ 
ing as children of the Lord. Of one thus dis¬ 
tressed it may be asked : What, are you clinging 
to some sinful indulgence that you are not will¬ 
ing to give up? u No, oh no!” Do you try 
day by day to overcome your faults ? “ Yes, I 

try, but I don’t succeed very well.” Is it your 
wish and effort to live for something more than 
your own happiness — to make other people happy, 
and to help them ? “ That is the life I want to 

live— I dare not say that I do live it.” Do you 
look to your Heavenly Father to help you and 
have patience with you — do you put your hope 
and trust in his infinite goodness ? “I would if 
I thought I had the right.” Why, you have no 
right not to ! Take to yourself the comfort and 
joy of your sonship. God asks nothing but that 
you will honestly try to do right, and trust his 
fatherly love, which is yours whether you know 
it or not. 

But there is another class, and perhaps a much 
larger one, whose trouble comes from the other 
side. In every revival, especially, there are per¬ 
sons who, having, as they believe, entered on the 
Christian life, think that they are out of all diffi¬ 
culty, and that for them the essential thing is al¬ 
ready done. Now, that is as if a child that has 


THE SIMPLICITY OF IT. 


61 


just entered a primary school should suppose that 
it had got an education. It is as if a boy just 
bound apprentice to a mechanic should think he 
had obtained a livelihood for all his days. Be¬ 
ginning a Christian life is only beginning. There 
needs daily, hourly work to follow it, clear to the 
end of life. 

There is some religious teaching that is liable 
to mislead men about this. We read of Mr. 
Moody’s using this illustration : When in the old 
days a slave ran away he was in deadly peril so 
long as he was on American soil, but the very in¬ 
stant he stepped across the Canada line he was 
absolutely safe. So, said Mr. Moody, you may 
step in a moment from the kingdom of sin to the 
kingdom of Christ and be secure. Now, that il¬ 
lustration seems to us likely to mislead. Practi¬ 
cally, no man escapes from the bondage of sin 
in a moment, or in a day, or in a year. He 
may set out to escape, he may turn squarely 
about and begin to forsake his evil habits, and 
from the very first he may have a joyful sense 
that God is his helper. But he is somewhat like 
the slave when he first set his face toward the 
North Star, with a thousand miles of travel be¬ 
fore him, with difficulties and dangers enough to 
tax his every resource. In the New Testament 
the Christian life is continually likened to the 


62 


A LIVING FAITH. 


soldier’s life. Its word is, “ Be sober, be vigi¬ 
lant ! ” “Put on the whole armor of God, that 
ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the 
devil.” There is courage and joy in every tone 
of the Gospel, but it is the courage of the reso¬ 
lute and faithful soldier; it is the joy of press¬ 
ing on, and always on, into noble attainment. If 
ever a man had a conversion that was sudden 
and complete, it was Paul. But there is not the 
least hint in Paul’s words that he looked back to 
find in that experience his assurance or his hope. 
He said that he forgot those things that are be¬ 
hind, and reached forth unto those things which 
are before. He had such a sense of the glorious 
ideal revealed in Christ, the splendid possibilities 
of divine manhood, that his whole soul went out 
in the aspiration to rise higher and higher into 
that life of closest union with God. And our sal¬ 
vation from ignoble and ruinous content lies in 
getting some such sense of what God calls us to. 

Religion is not an escape from punishment. 
It is being good and doing good. Any one who 
sees a chance to do right where he is tempted to 
do wrong, or to give so much as a cup of cold 
water to one who needs it, may begin in that 
very act to live a Christian life. He will never 
reach the place to pause so long as he is less good 
than his highest thought of goodness, and so long 
as there is one creature that needs his help. 


IX. 


AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE. 

In the Episcopal Catechism — which compares 
with the Westminster very much as the Epis¬ 
tle of James with those of Paul—there are sun¬ 
dry old-fashioned precepts at which the unregen¬ 
erate American is very much disposed to laugh. 
To his ears, the phrase, “ To keep my hands from 
picking and stealing,” hardly sounds funnier 
than its neighbor, “ To order myself lowly and 
reverently to all my betters.” The fashion of 
acknowledging any “ betters ” has pretty much 
gone out in this part of the world ! “ Lowliness 

and reverence,” toward whomsoever, are not the 
most characteristic graces of our people. And 
not much more in accordance with popular ways 
of thought is the clause which brings to an em¬ 
phatic period this section of the child’s lesson, — 
“ To do my duty in that state of life into which 
it shall please God to call me.” But this staid 
and quiet phrase is a jewel. It embodies a spirit 
which has been the secret of English greatness, 
and which is at the root of all moral greatness. 


64 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Its lesson is one that every American needs to 
lay to heart, to practice daily, to work into the 
foundation of his life. 

It is the good fortune of our country that it 
offers to every man the opportunity to rise. In 
Europe the plowman must be a plowman all his 
life ; the cook must be a cook; the clerk cannot 
get beyond his stool. But with us the laborer 
hopes one day to be a proprietor, and the clerk 
expects to be a merchant. Hardly any one at 
the outset accepts his station as fixed ; he thinks 
of it rather as the first stage in a course of prog¬ 
ress. This largeness of opportunity we owe not 
half so much to any virtue or sagacity in our¬ 
selves or our fathers, as to the Providence which 
has put a new continent into our hands, and set 
us free from the cramping conditions of Europe’s 
older civilization. In this richness of possibili¬ 
ties, this free scope given to the energy and am¬ 
bition of every man, there is both opportunity 
and stimulus for the highest achievement. But 
in this, also, lies a temptation which may wreck 
any man, as it may wreck the nation. 

It is hard to be patient when a bright future 
seems to stand just before us. It is hard to put 
our hearts into disagreeable work to-day, when 
we hope to have pleasant work to-morrow. It is 
hard to be true to the pole-star of Duty when 


AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE. 


65 


Fortune shines like a brilliant planet within our 
sight. Impatience, carelessness, feverish haste, 
contempt for the narrow present and its petty 
duties, these beset us close. The feeling grows 
up that the present is but a stepping-stone to the 
future, and is worth nothing for its own sake. 
So the work of the present is done, as it were, 
mechanically, with the hands only, while the 
eyes and heart are fixed on the alluring future. 
Work done in that way is never well done. 
The heart, the life, must in some measure go 
into the meanest task if it is to be well per¬ 
formed. So the land is cursed with careless 
work; with houses whose walls are so thin 
that they tumble ; with mechanics who do not 
understand their trade; with laborers who 
shirk; with politicians ignorant of statesman¬ 
ship. 

The work of the present hour, — whether it be 
the student’s lesson, the carpenter’s job, or the 
preacher’s sermon — is God’s direct gift and 
message to us. To do it faithfully is for the 
time being the whole of the Law and the Gos¬ 
pel to our souls. The ultimate results of it are 
beyond our reach and knowledge. They are 
God’s business. Ours is to do with our might 
whatsoever our hand findeth to do. 

Where is a man’s religion to take hold of him ? 

5 


66 


A LIVING FAITH. 


If it leads him to pray, to seek communion with 
God, to do works of benevolence, that is well. 
But no man can live in a constant glow of devo¬ 
tion. Few men can give largely of their time 
to works of charity. The great majority of the 
waking hours of mankind are of necessity passed 
in their “secular” employments,—in counting- 
room, workshop, or kitchen. And if Christian¬ 
ity is more than an intermittent force, if it is 
universal in its obligation and its power, it must 
be with men in these places. How are they to 
bring its spirit there ? It must be done partly 
indeed by maintaining a temper of love to those 
they meet, but in great part also by doing faith¬ 
fully and thoroughly the work they have to do. 

Often a man may see in the direct effects of 
his work how, by doing it well, he is contribut¬ 
ing to God’s service. Good done to men is ser¬ 
vice to God. The man who by his labor con¬ 
tributes in any degree to the comfort or the 
security of others, — by raising corn for them to 
eat, by building ships for them to use, or by 
promoting the commercial exchange of goods, — 
is contributing to the sum of human happiness. 
Every part of his work, however trifling in itself, 
has a bearing on this grand final result. And as 
the world’s physical health and comfort is the 
necessary condition of its spiritual growth, so 


AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE. 


67 


whoever works for men’s bodies does indirectly 
something for their souls. So, after praying 
“ Thy kingdom come,” we may help in the prog¬ 
ress of God’s kingdom by just doing honestly 
and well our day’s work. There is a great truth 
in this view of daily labor; it is because the 
truth is so large that we habitually fail to grasp 
it. We have a right to take comfort in the 
thought that our daily work, which perhaps 
seems sordid and low, is a real help to the great 
world of our fellow-men, and so a service to the 
Father of all. 

But if a man fails to see how his work has any 
such useful issue, still, if it be an honest employ¬ 
ment, and the one to which circumstances call 
him, he may feel that in it he is serving God. 
We are all as children at school, and tasks are 
set us by a wisdom far above our comprehension. 
To master them faithfully, to be true to the de¬ 
mand of each common hour as well as each great 
crisis, that is to honor God, and to work out our 
own salvation. 

We said that this principle of fidelity to every¬ 
day duty was the secret of England’s greatness. 
It has created in her people a noble type of char¬ 
acter, to which she owes all that is best in her 
history. Nelson’s great appeal on the morning 
of his last victory — “ England expects every 


68 


A LIVING FAITH. 


man to do his duty ! ” — found its response in 
hearts trained in this school. Says Wordsworth, 
in one of his finest odes: — 

“ Stern daughter of the voice of God, 

O Duty ! . . . . 

Stern Lawgiver ! Yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead’s most benignant grace; 

Nor know we anything more fair 
Than is the smile upon thy face! ” 

Tennyson, in his “ Ode on the Death of the 
Duke of Wellington,” makes him the type of 
this English fidelity. He that treads the path 
of duty, says the poet, 

- u before his journey closes, 

He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
Into glossy purples, which out-redden 
All voluptuous garden roses! ” 

The greatness which Germany is now display¬ 
ing to the world has its foundation in qualities 
closely allied to this moral fidelity. It is be¬ 
cause her people have been so largely faithful 
each in his own place to the daily work of life, 
that they have acquired the intelligence, the or¬ 
ganization, the discipline, that now make their 
armies the world’s wonder. It is because of this 
quality, together with the faith in moral reali¬ 
ties which we believe lies deep in the people’s 
hearts, that we look with hope to the influence 
of the new Germany upon the world. 


AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE. 


69 


From the good Anglo-Saxon stock our nation 
draws what is best in its typical character. But 
in our circumstances, in our good fortune itself, 
are strong forces to sweep us away from the 
habit and instinct of daily fidelity. That habit 
and instinct are comparatively easy and natural 
where external success in life obviously rests di¬ 
rectly upon them. But where success seems at¬ 
tainable by shorter methods, where thoroughness 
seems a waste of time, and patience may be 
called dullness, there comes the strain against 
which we must brace ourselves. Only by self- 
discipline, by holding ourselves firmly and stead¬ 
ily to ways which are w T earisome and long, can 
we win the real prizes of life. 

In quiet fidelity to daily duty lies the only 
sure hope of reaching a high spiritual state. 
The conscious communion with God, the abiding 
presence of joyful love, to which the soul aspires 
as its highest delight, is to be reached only 
through patient continuance in well-doing. Brief 
and hectic ecstasy may spring up in a life that 
is wayward and fitful, but the peace which pass- 
eth understanding can be hoped for only by 
him who is content to be true to duty day by 
day and hour by hour, foregoing raptures if 
they are not granted him, seeking only to do 
his whole work in life honestly and well. To 


70 


A LIVING FAITH. 


him at last, perhaps even in this world, and 
surely in the world to come, the gates of glory 
shall be opened, and the Master’s voice say, 
“ Thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
I will make thee ruler over many things ; enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord.” 


X. 


THE NEGLECT OF WORSHIP. 

Protestantism, in our day, stands for liberty, 
for morality, for benevolence. But it does not 
sufficiently stand for religious feeling. It does 
not enough habituate its members to commun¬ 
ion with God. If Catholicism unduly exalts the 
devotional and mystical element in religion, most 
Protestant churches no less unduly subordinate it. 

It might be hard to trace all the causes and 
remedies of this state of things. But there is one 
influence which has a conspicuous bearing on it, 
and ought to be carefully studied. It is the Sun¬ 
day service of the church. We except the prayer¬ 
meeting and Sunday-school, for the present, and 
speak only of the main service of the day. It 
is in this that the church life culminates. Here, 
where all its members are assembled, for the chief 
service of the chief day of the week, the strongest 
influence is to be looked for. It seems to us of 
the highest importance that the great characteris¬ 
tic, the chief aim and occupation, of this service, 
should be ivorship . 


72 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Worship, in its full sense, the soul’s communion 
with God through prayer and adoration, is the 
noblest, the most elevating act of man. And 
there is no one but needs the helping impulse 
toward it which comes from human sympathy. 
The gathering of a company of Christian wor¬ 
shipers on the Sabbath, all set free from the 
habitual press of occupation and care; each 
seeing about him familiar and friendly faces ; 
all consciously joined in a common faith and 
hope and love; all • seeking the face of one 
Father, — such a gathering has unequaled ca¬ 
pacity to lift men upward into strong and joyful 
consciousness of divine things. In the confluence 
of all these single streams there is a great res¬ 
ervoir of power, a force, if it is rightly brought 
into play, to lift the heart upward, as a wave 
lifts the swimmer. It needs only that the music 
should be struck from all these silent keys; that 
by some fit act of outward expression the lat¬ 
ent sense of sympathetic feeling should be kin¬ 
dled to consciousness. Let this be done, and 
the whole assembly is fused in an ardor which 
the solitary worshiper can rarely attain. 

Of this great opportunity our churches gener¬ 
ally make but very insufficient use. In the first 
place, — we are speaking of the non-Episcopal 
churches, — they make the great feature of the 


THE NEGLECT OF WORSHIP. 


73 


service, not worship, but instruction. The hymns 
and prayers are hardly more than a prelude and 
conclusion to the sermon. This seems a great 
mistake. Christian assemblies, as a rule, need 
far less to be taught than to exercise themselves 
in devotion. One would think that if ever there 
was an opposite need it was with the churches 
first gathered by the Apostles. If ever congre¬ 
gations had as their first want instruction in relig¬ 
ious truth, it would seem to have been those 
young societies, just gathered out of case-hardened 
Judaism or ignorant heathenism. But we find 
that in their Sunday services formal instruction 
had a very small part. The joyful outpouring of 
each believer’s heart was the prominent thing. 
The Lord’s Supper, with its appeal to feeling 
through symbol, was celebrated every week. The 
early pastors were hardly preachers at all; at 
least, preaching was not their prominent function. 
Paul, describing to Timothy the qualifications of 
a pastor, puts 44 aptness to teach ” only as one 
among a dozen requisites, and does not name 
preaching at all. 

On some accounts, preaching may rightly have 
a higher relative place now than then. But, on 
the other hand, it is to be remembered that in 
a community long permeated by Christian truth 
the need of instruction becomes less. Besides, in 


74 


A LIVING FAITH. 


our society the work of religious teaching is 
largely carried on by other agencies than the 
preacher. The religious newspaper, the popular 
commentary, the Sunday-school, supply a great 
deal for which the congregation used to depend on 
their preacher. 

And, on the other hand, the character of our 
modern life peculiarly requires that the Church 
make ample provision for devotion. The whole 
set of our intensely active life is away from med¬ 
itation and calm. We read with astonishment 
of the hours that our ancestors daily gave to their 
private devotions. Our life compared with theirs 
is one of external action. The change is largely 
for the better, but there is an evil in it. Men 
need and always will need room for tender and 
thoughtful communings with God; times of se¬ 
clusion from outward activities, in which the 
soul may spread its wings and fly upward. In 
the hurry and stress of our daily lives, this is 
very hard to reach. There is the more need that 
the Church make ample provision for it in her 
services. We look on an assembled congregation, 
and we know that most of the men have come out 
for that day from a whirl of business that sweeps 
through the week; that the women have come 
from the unending routine of family cares ; 
that even those of secluded and thoughtful lives 


THE NEGLECT OF WORSHIP. 


75 


have been buffeting with the restless, strenuous 
thoughts of this unquiet age. One and all, they 
need to be taken out of these crowding activities, 
and to be lifted up into the peace which comes 
only from looking upon God’s face. They do not 
want man’s thoughts ; they want a consciousness 
of their Maker’s and Saviour’s presence. The 
humility of confession, the trust of supplication, 
the joy of praise, — these are what should be 
aroused in them. It is well that there should be 
in addition some presentation of religious truth, 
under intellectual and oratorical forms. But to 
make this chief, — to crowd prayers and hymns 
into a corner, and make the delivery of the 
minister’s thoughts the main thing,—is giving 
stones for bread. 

As a natural consequence of the subordinate 
place generally given to worship in our services, 
little care seems to have been bestowed on its 
methods. It is very singular that our non-litur- 
gical churches, being perfectly free to arrange 
their services each in its own way, have almost 
universally fallen into one traditional routine. 
The uniformity is a sign less of any special excel¬ 
lence in the arrangement, than of carelessness 
about improving it. All our theological semi¬ 
naries have professors of sermon-writing, but we 
never knew of one where the subject of the devo- 


76 


A LIVING FAITH. 


tional services received any special attention. In 
point of fact, the prevailing arrangement of public 
worship is for most churches a very poor one. It 
has this cardinal fault, that it leaves the worship, 
as well as the preaching, absolutely dependent on 
one man for its character. If he has unusual 
powers, and is uniformly in good physical and 
mental condition, his ministrations may be very 
profitable. If he is but an ordinary man, or if, 
being more than ordinary, he is yet liable to 
moods of weakness and depression, the congre¬ 
gation fares badly in its most vital interests. 
That is a very poor system which works well only 
in highly exceptional cases. 

There is this other great objection to the pre¬ 
vailing arrangement, that it leaves the congrega¬ 
tion almost wholly passive. They are, at farthest, 
allowed to join in the singing of three hymns. 
For the most part, they sit in dumb silence. 
They do nothing. And doing nothing, they are 
very likely to feel nothing. 

It is apart from the purpose of this article to 
discuss at large the relative advantages of litur¬ 
gical and extempore worship. But it is impossi¬ 
ble not to notice that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church is a conspicuous exception in providing 
a truly congregational service as the main feat¬ 
ure of its public exercises; and it is impossible 


THE NEGLECT OF WORSHIP. 


77 


not to connect this with the familiar fact that the 
members of this Church show an altogether ex¬ 
ceptional love and fondness for its services. 

Into the wide field of the possible variations in 
the methods of worship we shall not now enter. 
We desire only to emphasize the general fact, — 
that the coldness of religious feeling, which is a 
conspicuous defect of most Protestant churches, is 
largely due to the failure of those churches to 
make suitable provision for worship in their ser¬ 
vices. 


XI. 


DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. 

The religious life of an age takes form and 
color to some extent from its secular life. There 
is action and reaction between them. The 
streams of religion, philosophy, science, com¬ 
merce, politics, domestic life, do not flow side by 
side without mingling; each of them owes some¬ 
thing to all the others. 

One of the most striking phenomena of our 
time is the tendency throughout Christendom to 
democracy. “ Government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people” — equal rights and 
equal opportunity for every human being — these 
are now powerful and almost universal ideas. It 
is worth while to consider some of their effects 
upon religious life. 

Christianity was born in a despotic age. The 
Roman Empire maintained peace and order by 
the sacrifice of liberty. Christ and the Apostles 
never bade men to strive for civil freedom. So¬ 
ciety was not in a fit state for liberty, and the 
new religion adapted itself to the existing state of 


DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. 


79 


things. “ Submit yourselves to every ordinance 
of man ” was its wise word to its disciples. The 
Church itself rapidly developed into an organized 
system of authority. Men were used to being 
governed by some one above them in the State, 
and they wanted some one to govern them in the 
Church. By the side of prefect and proconsul 
naturally grew up bishop and archbishop. When 
the Dark Ages came, men sought in the confusion 
and chaos for some controlling hand, and found 
the Church’s hand stronger than any other. Then 
came feudalism, when society was broken up into 
a thousand little principalities, and only the 
Church possessed any semblance of general au¬ 
thority. A copy of the old Empire grew up, but 
it broke and fell when it came in conflict with 
the now mighty Church. In a word, from its 
origin down to the Reformation, Christianity con¬ 
formed to the spirit of the time, in associating 
itself with strong authoritative government. 

The spiritual despotism which is so obnoxious 
to modern feeling was, during this period, very 
far from an unmixed evil; indeed, it was in 
some sort a necessity. Since Christianity was 
not strong enough to instantly make society fit 
for freedom, the next best thing was that it 
should adapt its forms to the actual state of so¬ 
ciety. Great as were the evils of the Church’s 


80 


A LIVING FAITH. 


domination, it was, on the whole, infinitely better 
that men should be governed by a power which 
did in some degree stand for moral ideas than 
that they should be controlled by mere brute 
force. Christianity not only took an impress 
from the despotic cast of society ; it also gave an 
impress, and a very strong one, in favor of free¬ 
dom. The idea that as brethren in Christ all 
men were equal worked powerfully. It first mit¬ 
igated and then abolished slavery throughout 
Europe. The Christian religion impressed on 
rulers ideas of justice and responsibility. Alfred, 
Charlemagne, St. Louis, all the best mediaeval 
rulers, owed to the Church the lessons which 
gave moral elevation to their sway. The priest¬ 
hood itself, though a governing caste, was open 
always to the humblest of the people. The 
priest’s office was the gateway through which 
genius and goodness might pass from the low¬ 
est ranks of society to the highest places of 
power. 

Reverting now to the broad fact that for fif¬ 
teen hundred years Christianity was closely asso¬ 
ciated with authoritative and arbitrary govern¬ 
ment in both Church and State, we see certain 
great consequences upon the general religious life 
of the times. Men were made extremely submis¬ 
sive in matters of opinion, and free thought was 


DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. 81 

shut up within narrow limits. The priesthood 
became a sacred caste, the only dispenser of sav¬ 
ing grace. Submission to authority — in accept¬ 
ing the Church’s dogmas, duly receiving its rites, 
and ministering to its temporal wealth — was ex¬ 
alted until conduct and character were thrown 
into the shade. The old, always-recurring mis¬ 
take of mankind — the substitution of some other 
thing for right living as the way to Divine favor 
— was repeated, with most disastrous effect. The 
abuse became unendurable; and after Wickliff 
and Huss and many another had fallen in vain 
revolt, a wave of revolution, of which Luther was 
the crest, swept over Northern Europe and left it 
free from Roman domination. 

But not wholly free. Three hundred and fifty 
years ago Europe was in no state for political or 
spiritual democracy. Civil freedom had small 
foothold on the Continent, and England had re¬ 
verted from its earlier liberties to the Tudor des¬ 
potism. In Germany and in England the re¬ 
formed Church passed under the direct control of 
the monarch who ruled the State. Everywhere 
the ministerial class retained a large part of the 
honors and prerogatives of the priesthood. “ New 
Presbyter is but old Priest writ large,” said Mil- 
ton. Everywhere “confessions of faith” were 
adopted by the Reformers as dogmatic as those 


82 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of the old Church. The old means of enforce¬ 
ment by sword and fagot soon failed ; but the 
old spiritual weapon, the threat of perdition, still 
guarded the orthodox creeds. 

Still further, the theology of the Reformation 
bore quite as strongly as that which it replaced 
the impress of monarchical ideas. The Augusti- 
nian theology viewed God as an absolute and ir¬ 
responsible sovereign, as free to dispense or with¬ 
hold his favor as the Emperor of Rome. That 
He should decree eternal life to some and eter¬ 
nal death to others, irrespective of any determin¬ 
ing quality in their conduct, was not a repulsive 
thought to a mind educated under despotic insti¬ 
tutions. This conception of a Divine Sovereignty 
absolutely unlimited, and imposing its own arbi¬ 
trary will on the moral constitution of the uni¬ 
verse and the destiny of every creature, was car¬ 
ried out by the reformer Calvin with a thorough¬ 
ness and consistency which it had never received 
before. His theology is intensely monarchical. 
It constitutes an aristocracy of the elect, creat¬ 
ures of the sovereign’s favor, and by that alone 
exalted to eternal dominion, while by a like ar¬ 
bitrary decree the non-elect are remitted to per¬ 
dition. Calvinism never made men democrats; 
it has often helped to make them aristocratic 
republicans, brave to maintain their own rights, 
but not tender of the rights of others. 


DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. 


83 


The Reformation, it has been said, left a large 
element of arbitrary authority in the constitution 
and theology of the Church. This was inevitable, 
since the time was one of arbitrary authority in 
the whole constitution of society. It is within 
the past century that the great democratic im¬ 
pulse has swept through Europe and America, 
working mighty changes, and bearing us on to¬ 
ward other changes that we cannot distinctly fore¬ 
see. That impulse is felt in every department of 
religious life. It is changing the forms of church 
government. One great revolution has been 
wrought in America, and visibly impends in Eu¬ 
rope, in the entire separation of churches from 
State support and control. The interior govern¬ 
ment of churches is changing. The Methodist 
organization, youngest and strongest of the great 
Protestant churches, originally approached near¬ 
est to the Catholic church in its concentration of 
authority. Now it is admitting the laity to divide 
the authority with the clergy. It is because the 
Catholic church will not thus alter with the times 
that it is drifting helplessly toward overthrow. 
All Protestant churches show the same tendency 
toward popular government. 

But other effects of the democratic spirit upon 
religion are still more interesting. Breaking 
down respect for caste, it rapidly wears away the 


84 


A LIVING FAITH. 


sacerdotal systems which involve the idea of spe¬ 
cial grace inherent in a priesthood. Ritualism, 
as an approach to Romanism in doctrine, is a weak 
reaction against the great current of the time. 
Taking a still wider view, the whole principle of 
arbitrary authority in religious belief — of creeds 
imposed by any other sanction than the assent of 
reason and the moral sense — is melting away like 
snows in April. We may differ as to whether it 
is for good or evil, but the fact admits of no dis¬ 
pute. Whatever religious ideas are to sway men 
must do so by commanding the sincere assent of 
their reason and the enthusiastic assent of their 
moral feeling. It is building upon sand to bid 
men to believe thus and so because the Church or 
the minister or the catechism says so. The only 
foundation of faith that will defy all storms is 
that which is wrought out in the heart itself. 

The democratic spirit does not work good alone, 
any more than monarchic ideas worked only evil. 
There is danger of impatience under reasonable 
restraint, of loss of reverence for things venerable, 
of carelessness and restlessness and wanton self- 
will. To guard against these dangers is one of 
the highest duties of the time. But, at bottom, 
the spirit of democracy holds noble and immortal 
truths. Conspicuously in two ways is its influ¬ 
ence upon religious thought wholesome. It helps 


DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. 85 

to correct the conception which set God like an 
Eastern despot over mankind, to bless or to curse 
at will. In utmost reverence we now say that 
even as before his Maker man has rights. We 
honor God more in saying that he too conforms 
to eternal justice and right, than in putting him 
outside of them. The figure of a king — as kings 
have been upon earth — represents him far less 
worthily than that of a father. We are his chil¬ 
dren ; and every one of us has upon him the 
claim of a child — not for justice only, but for 
compassionate and helpful love, great as our need 
is great. 

And, as between men, the spirit of democracy 
in its highest form is just the idea of brotherhood. 
There is a lower element, there is the selfish 
struggle of each to grasp all he can for himself, 
there is a notion of equality which would pull 
down the highest to the level of the lowest; but 
democracy has in it something nobler than that. 
There is the spirit which says : “ Let the strong 
race be just to the weak race ; let the rich share 
with the poor; let each live for the good of all.” 
It is this spirit that glorifies many a socialistic 
and communistic scheme, foolish in itself perhaps, 
and with a good deal of base alloy, but which has 
power over men by this appeal to their nobler 
natures. And this is the very spirit of the high- 


86 


A LIVING FAITH. 


est Christianity, that mankind are “ members 
one of another; ” that the suffering of one is the 
suffering of all, and should have the sympathiz¬ 
ing help of all; and that happiness and blessing 
find their completeness only as they are set to 
minister to the children of sorrow and bring them 
into light. That all men are brothers, and that 
all are the children of God, — is not that a faith 
to live and die by ? 


XII. 


A MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 

There is a strong disposition in men of intel¬ 
lectual culture to associate with their own class, 
and keep aloof from the uneducated multitude. 
It is the natural impulse of like seeking like. 
The disposition is not confined to those to whom 
culture is only a means of selfish enjoyment. 
Men who to an intellectual habit of mind add 
moral earnestness, and aim at noble ends, are 
largely controlled by the same instinct. It is 
very noticeable among ministers. They are apt 
to live in their studies, among books, and in in¬ 
tellectual society, until their whole habit of mind 
and their very language differs from that of the 
mass of the community. The same thing holds 
good to a great extent of the whole class of liter¬ 
ary and cultivated people. 

A man who works by ideas may even feel him¬ 
self necessitated to do this. Can one whose 
power lies in aptitude for thought be serviceable 
among those who hardly know how to think ? 
Must not a man to whom abstractions are more 


88 


A LIVING FAITH. 


real than things seen be content to address him¬ 
self to an audience “ fit but few ? ” 

It is worth while to look at the practice, in 
this respect, of Jesus. Humanly speaking, he 
was of transcendent genius. To him the whole 
world was instinet with higher meanings than 
other men saw. The sacred literature of his peo¬ 
ple opened to him depths that no other had 
pierced. His thoughts took a sweep of marvel¬ 
ous height and depth and breadth. To no other 
man was ever the mere outside of life of so little 
account. And he conceived a purpose transcend¬ 
ing the boldest flight of any other imagination. 
Other philosophers had tried to solve the prob¬ 
lem of human existence. Other statesmen had 
founded nations, and even national religions. 
But the work he gave himself was not merely to 
answer abstract questions as to man’s nature, but 
to practically meet the highest wants of that nat¬ 
ure ; to found, not a school of thinkers, not a 
nation, but a kingdom which should in its prog¬ 
ress embrace all nations and provide for all 
schools of thought. He was to inaugurate a 
revolution compared with which the revolutions 
wrought by Plato and Bacon in the realm of 
thought, or by Julius Caesar in the world’s polit¬ 
ical system, were insignificant. For this immeas¬ 
urable work he had but the space of three years. 


A MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 


89 


Within that time, he was to give firm foothold 
to these new principles, and prepare his followers 
to carry on his work. 

Being a man of such ideas and purposes, he 
lived almost wholly among the common people. 
He spoke their language. Most of his public ad¬ 
dresses were made to them. Most of his intimate 
associates were chosen from them. With the edu¬ 
cated class he had comparatively little contact. 
Through Tiis whole career he was emphatically 
a man of the common people. 

We must consider what was this educated class, 
and what was the common people. In the former 
were the priests, the regular ministers of the true 
religion ; the scribes, the men of letters; the 
Pharisees, the most respectable and orthodox 
part of the community; the Sadducees, acute, 
skeptical thinkers. Besides these, there came up 
yearly to Jerusalem representatives of the out¬ 
side world, men like Paul, familiar with Greek 
literature and thought, men versed in the fertile 
philosophies of Alexandria. Jesus had easy ac¬ 
cess to scholars equipped with the world’s highest 
learning, trained under the intellectual culture of 
the Hebrews and the Greeks. 

But he began his ministry and chiefly carried 
it on among a wholly different class. He chose 
as his intimate associates and disciples some fish- 


90 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ermen and peasants of Galilee. In these rough, 
uncultivated men, he implanted the ideas which 
were to outshine the philosophy of Plato, the 
truths that Moses and Isaiah had not reached. 
In his daily life he associated himself with the 
plain, unlettered class. He not only preached 
to them; he ate and drank with them, healed 
their diseases “ laying his hands on them,” had 
them always thronging about him. His language 
was that of common life; his illustrations were 
drawn from experiences and feelings familiar to 
humble folks. 

The educated class was as a whole hostile to 
him. But he did not begin by trying to win 
them, nor does it appear that he ever looked es¬ 
pecially to them for support, or *was disappointed 
at their hostility. From the first, and through¬ 
out, he sought and found his listeners and adher¬ 
ents chiefly among the ignorant, the uncultivated, 
the unrefined. The “ multitude ” among whom 
he chiefly labored, were as unaccustomed to deep 
thought, as unsusceptible to spiritual truth, as the 
mass of men always are. 

And it may be doubted whether the educated 
class was more unreceptive of truth than the edu¬ 
cated class usually is. The Pharisees were not 
so totally different from our Doctors of Divinity. 
The Sadducees might find a counterpart in our 


A MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 


91 


educated skeptics. Priests, Levites, lawyers, 
scribes, students of Greek philosophy, partook 
largely of the qualities that usually attach to the 
ministerial and scholarly character. 

In a word, the educated and uneducated classes 
in the time of Christ differed much as the same 
classes always do ; each had its own strength and 
its own weakness. And in this state of things, 
the greatest idealist, the man of amplest intellect¬ 
ual and spiritual nature that ever lived, had his 
daily companionship with the uneducated, and 
wrought chiefly through them the greatest work 
the world ever knew. 

For those who live in the realm of moral ideas, . 
and who would use them in the service of man¬ 
kind, there is a lesson in this fact, the meaning of 
which is not easily or soon exhausted. 


XIII. 


THE INNER WITNESS. 

We have received a letter from a woman of un¬ 
common intelligence and thoughtfulness, laying 
before us her religious difficulties. She was 
trained in a severe and gloomy theology, and, 
being evidently of a docile and believing nature, 
accepted it implicity. But some of its doctrines 
have become to her an almost unsupportable bur¬ 
den. Yet she cannot renounce them until her 
mind is honestly satisfied as to whether they are 
true or false. These doctrines represent God in 
such a light that she feels it almost impossible to 
love or worship such a being. There has arisen 
in her mind another view, which she feels if it 
were true would greatly enlighten and comfort 
her. Toward this view her reason, her sense of 
right and wrong, her instinctive sense of what is 
most worthy of the Divine character, strongly 
impel her. But in regard to these workings of 
her mind she feels a great distrust and dread, be¬ 
cause in them she recognizes no Divine authority. 
The traditional creed claims an express sanction 


THE INNER WITNESS. 


93 


from God: how can she dare to oppose to it the 
uninspired suggestions of mere human reason ? 
So she is in doubt and distress. 

We refer to this letter, not to answer it here, 
but to use it as an illustration of a general and 
vital truth. The writer of the letter is suffering 
in part from one-sided and imperfect teaching as 
to the true methods of apprehending religious 
truth, — we might say, the methods of God’s rev¬ 
elation. She has been taught implicit reverence 
for historical and recorded revelation. But her 
teaching has wholly ignored the direct disclosure 
of himself which God makes in the human soul. 
She bows in humility before the word spoken 
to Moses, to Elijah, or to Paul. But that God 
speaks directly to her is wholly foreign to her 
thought. And yet it is as certain as anything in 
Christianity that to the humble, devout, truth¬ 
seeking soul God immediately manifests himself 
and directly imparts the truth. 

This is no sentimental or mystical idea. It 
admits of the soberest philosophical statement. 
The human mind in all its faculties is constituted 
by God. Those faculties which are appropriate 
for the acquisition of knowledge are appointed 
by him, and are valid to the end for which they 
were appointed. There are faculties appropriate 
to the knowledge of the senses ; there are others 


94 


A LIVING FAITH. 


appropriate to more abstract knowledge; and at 
the summit there are faculties whose sole and 
special function it is to apprehend moral and re¬ 
ligious truth. The truth which comes to man 
through the exercise of these faculties comes just 
as much from God as if a voice spoke from the 
heavens or a finger wrote on the sky. 

When a man, using his own mind, perceives 
that two and two make four, he apprehends that 
truth by the method which God appointed. All 
the results of mathematics, being reached by 
the right use of the proper mental faculties, are 
reached in accordance with Divine law. Go now 
to a higher realm, the realm of conscience. That 
faculty, too, is implanted by God. It admits of 
education ; and the best educated conscience ap¬ 
prehends the most truth in morals, just as the 
best educated mathematician reaches the most 
truth in his field. Conscience, then, the sense 
of right and wrong, is truly a Divine voice in the 
soul. When a man’s sincere conviction tells him 
in regard to his conduct, “This is right,” or 
“ This is wrong,” he is as much bound by it as 
he can be bound by anything. That is the most 
trustworthy indication he has of what God would 
have him do. 

Still further, the sense of right and wrong must 
guide us not only as to our own conduct, but as 


THE INNER WITNESS. 


95 


to our thought of God. Whatever our highest 
conception of goodness is, that to us must be the 
conception of God. There are not two kinds of 
goodness, one for God and another for men. Our 
highest thought of purity, of justice, of love — 
that must be our thought of God. 

“ Not mine to look where cherubim 
And seraphs may not see, 

But nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me. ’ ’ 

Through conscience, then, — the sense of right 
and wrong, — God reveals himself, and reveals 
himself more fully as the sense of right and 
wrong becomes clearer and stronger. But there 
is a faculty higher even than conscience. There 
is in the soul, latent or developed, a power by 
which it may come into direct, conscious, joyful 
intercourse with its God. It may feel him nearer 
than any human friend ever was. This is the 
loftiest and most blessed experience of human 
nature. Those who have felt it know that it is 
not imaginary or delusive, but deeper and surer 
than anything besides. In such moments the 
soul sees God face to face; it knows him there¬ 
after, not by report of another, but by what it 
has felt and known for itself. 

We say, then, that God has so constituted man 
that through his nobler faculties, his reason and 


96 


A LIVING FAITH. 


conscience and spiritual sense, he may have di¬ 
rect and personal knowledge, not only of mate¬ 
rial things, but of the moral realm and the Di¬ 
vine nature. To apply this: here is a person, 
trained in Christian habits of living, conscien¬ 
tious, earnestly desiring to know the truth. It 
is to be believed that God will use her faculties 
— thus Christianly educated, and held in humil¬ 
ity and reverence and aspiration toward what is 
right — as channels for his truth. The voice of 
her reason and moral sense, her own instinctive 
and irrepressible conviction of what is best and 
worthiest of the Divine character — this must be 
to her as the voice of God. 

It is said, as in opposition to these views, that 
upon religious truth we have an explicit revela¬ 
tion, which is contained in the Bible. But what 
is the great fact shining out from every page of 
the Bible? Is it not just this: that God has 
always revealed himself directly to men when 
they needed him ? That on countless occasions 
he made just that special disclosure, to men and 
to nations, which the special emergency called 
for ? The record of these disclosures has value 
not only for what they contain in themselves, but 
as teaching men to expect that God will always 
reveal himself to their special need. There is 
not in the Scriptures the slightest hint that after 


THE INNER WITNESS. 


97 


a certain time God was to shut himself up in 
heaven and leave men only records of his appear¬ 
ances in other days. On the contrary, all through 
the Scriptural period the promise broadens and 
brightens. The prophets foresaw the day when 
the Divine inspiration should illumine all men. 
“ And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith 
God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh : 
and your sons and your daughters shall proph¬ 
esy, and your young men shall see visions, and 
your old men shall dream dreams.” Was the 
day of Pentecost, when Peter recalled that great 
word of prophecy, the entire fulfillment of it? 
Rather, it was but the beginning. The history 
of the New Testament Church is jubilant with 
the sense of the immediate presence of God in 
all his people. It is because our faith has de¬ 
generated that we see God’s hand only in the 
past. He called the Israelites out of Egypt; did 
he not just as truly call the Pilgrim Fathers out 
of England ? Did he ever summon the Jewish 
people to any work more manifestly than he sum¬ 
moned the American people to a sacred war 
against slavery ? And what is true of nations 
is true of men. In every age, the soul that cries 
out for God finds him — finds him it may be 
through help of sacrifice, or temple, or church, or 
Bible ; but above all, finds him present in itself. 


98 


A LIVING FAITH. 


And, as the method of Scriptural revelation 
points directly to a continual revelation of God 
unto believing souls, so the supreme fact to which 
Scripture testifies affords the assurance of an 
ever-present heavenly guidance. Psalm, proph¬ 
ecy, gospel, epistle, all point to this, — a living 
God, who rules the universe, and dwells in every 
humble heart. There is 44 a true Light, that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” 
Jesus takes up the prophetic word and gives it 
a new fullness of meaning: “And they shall all 
be taught of God.” 44 If any of you lack wis¬ 
dom,” wrote the Apostle James, 44 let him ask 
of God, that giveth to all men liberally and up- 
braideth not, and it shall be given him.” 

It is said that if men trust to any inward guid¬ 
ance they are liable to self-delusion. But so 
they are under any guidance. No authority 
and no rule has yet been found that will abso¬ 
lutely secure men against mistake. The greatest 
safeguard, and the sure safeguard against fatal 
error, is given by Christ: 44 If any man will do 
His will , he shall know of the doctrine.” Right 
living, in the fullest sense, — the spirit of love to 
God and love to man, carried into every relation 
of life, — brings the soul into such a state that it 
is sensitive to moral truth, and apprehends it as 
if by instinct. Therefore do we, even in the in- 


THE INNER WITNESS. 


terest of a true theology, mainly insist on char¬ 
acter as the supreme necessity. For, through 
fidelity, through self-denial, through prayer ; by 
all ways of patient and loving service to men ; 
by sweetness of disposition, by humility, by open¬ 
ing itself as a little child to receive the heav¬ 
enly Guest — the soul is brought into tune, so 
that it answers the touch of the Divine Spirit 
with the sacred harmonies of truth. 


XIV. 


THE TEACHING OF THE SPIRIT. 

If we consider the fullness of divine wisdom 
which there was in Jesus, and then look at the 
narrow limitations within which his earthly teach¬ 
ing was shut up, we are struck with the thought 
of how much he must have left unsaid. His min¬ 
istry extended over hardly three years. He had 
to adapt his words to men who were extremely 
ignorant, and who even up to his death got only 
a faint glimmering sense of the higher truth 
which he tried to disclose. When he left them 
their education was extremely imperfect, as is 
shown by their childish questions until the last. 
And if that education had ended with his death, 
the new light would soon have faded out of the 
world. 

But, at the last, we find Jesus telling his fol¬ 
lowers that he has only made a beginning in 
teaching them, and that henceforth they are to 
be led upward in truth, not by a master wearing 
human form, but by the Spirit of God dwelling 
in their hearts. A promise was given, whose ful- 


THE TEACHING OF THE SPIRIT. 101 


fillment was to run through the ages : “ When 
the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into 
all truth.” 

So, we find from the history of the early Church 
that among its most striking features was a vivid 
and rejoicing sense of the immediate presence of 
the Spirit of God with every believer. By it the 
humblest Christian was comforted, strengthened, 
and enlightened. The apostolic teaching, in the 
Epistles, proceeds on this ground: that those to 
whom it was addressed were able to judge of the 
truth, because God dwelt with them and in them. 
“He that is spiritual,” writes Paul, “ judgeth 
(or discernetli) all things ; yet he himself is 
judged (discerned) of no man.” And so, John : 
“ Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye 
know all things. I have not written unto you 
because ye know not the truth, but because ye 
know it.” It was recognized indeed that there 
were different degrees of wisdom; that truth was 
discerned more clearly by some than by others, 
according to the variety of endowment and attain¬ 
ment ; yet all were under the immediate guidance 
of the Lord himself. There were “ diversities of 
gifts, but the same Spirit.” 

This great fact, of the immediate presence of 
the Spirit, did not end with the apostolic age. 
It stands as long as the Church endures. That 


102 


A LIVING FAITH. 


God dwells in the hearts of his people, at once 
their Life and their Light, is the most precious 
truth we have. Immanuel , God with us — not 
once only, in the visible Jesus, but forever, in 
most intimate and sacred companionship with 
whoever will receive the heavenly guest. 

The truth of a Divine Spirit which gives light 
to men, and new light as new needs arise, has 
been variously disguised as the Church lapsed 
from her first purity. It is caricatured in the 
theory of the Church of Rome, that the voice of 
the Holy Spirit speaks through councils and 
popes. It has sometimes been buried out of sight 
in metaphysical speculations as to the inner con¬ 
stitution of the Godhead. The New Testament 
teaching as to the Holy Spirit is in substance 
simply this : that there is a direct contact of the 
Divine soul with the human soul, through which 
light and strength and peace are given to who¬ 
ever will submit himself in obedience and trust 
to his heavenly Father. 

Practically, this truth has recognition in all 
faithful Christian lives. Every man who is liv¬ 
ing such a life looks to God for strength when he 
is weak, for comfort when he is in trouble, and 
for light when he is perplexed. But it is some¬ 
times overlooked that men nowhere need this 
immediate Divine guidance more than in their 


THE TEACHING OF THE SPIRIT. 103 


search for truth. It is overlooked partly per¬ 
haps because the hunger for truth is not so com¬ 
mon as other wants. But no human desire is 
more imperative and intense, none more bespeaks 
man’s relationship to the Divine, than the long¬ 
ing to know which impels a truth-seeking soul. 
And surely if there is any emergency in which a 
man has a right to go straight to God Himself, it 
is when he longs for light on the great moral 
and spiritual problems that beset every thought¬ 
ful nature. 

It is sometimes said that all great questions of 
moral truth have already received a Divine an¬ 
swer, and that the record of that answer is enough. 
And beyond question, the recorded testimony of 
men through whom the Divine light shone upon 
the world is of unspeakable value. But it is also 
to be borne in mind that that testimony can only 
be understood and received as a light is thrown 
on the page by the inward experience of him who 
reads. And, further, every man has his own in¬ 
dividual troubles and questionings, which find no 
exact parallel in any other’s experience. From 
the similar experience of others he may derive 
help ; but for him, too, there is the ever-present 
Spirit, the voice of God in his heart, and he must 
listen to that. 

So, too, as time goes on, the Church finds new 


104 


A LIVING FAITH. 


questions arising with each new age. The apos¬ 
tles found themselves face to face with problems 
of which there had been hardly a suggestion dur¬ 
ing their Master’s life. At the outset, the great 
question confronted them of the relations between 
the Jewish Church and the Gentile converts. 
The settling of that, under the providential lead¬ 
ership of Paul, was an immense task; but, before 
it was settled, numberless other questions of ad¬ 
ministration and of doctrine pressed upon the 
Church and had to be dealt with. In the next 
generation new questions arose, on which only a 
partial light was thrown by earlier discussions. 
So it has been ever since. So it must continue 
to be, except when men fall into that stagnation 
which is little short of death. And how are 
these new questions to be met? Not merely by 
precedents: precedents are often wanting; may 
even be misleading. The question, for instance, 
in our time, as to women’s teaching in the Church 
is so radically different from the same question in 
Paul’s time, that it is worse than idle to look to his 
teaching on the subject as authoritative. Or, shall 
we constitute a human tribunal absolute judge 
over these new questions ? The Church of Rome 
has done that, and has thereby got herself into 
flat opposition to all political and social progress. 
There is but one resource : we must listen each 


THE TEACHING OF THE SPIRIT. 105 


for himself to that inner voice of God which 
grows strong and clear as we live the life of God. 

But, how is that voice to be distinguished ? In 
seeking truth of any kind, we must conform to 
the appropriate laws of that realm of knowledge. 
If it be mathematical truth, we must proceed by 
the laws of mathematics. If we would study 
material science, we must proceed by careful ex¬ 
periment and induction : the results of these are 
final. And if we seek moral and spiritual truth, 
we must obey the law of the spiritual realm, that 
law which Jesus declared: “ If any man will do 
His will , he shall know of the doctrine.” If any 
man will live holily, he shall learn the truth about 
the highest things. The Spirit that leads into 
truth is the Spirit whose fruit is love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, mild¬ 
ness, self-control. He whose life is in that region 
where Christ lived, in the realm of fidelity and 
purity and love, he it is who shall find a sufficient 
and trustworthy answer to his deepest question¬ 
ings. 

And so, we may distinguish as the utterances 
of that voice those beliefs which best help us in 
right living. That belief which inspires a man 
to higher life, which moves him to trample down 
his besetting sins, to help his weaker brother, to 
rise into communion with God, is to him a Divine 


106 


A LIVING FAITH. 


voice. He may not impose it with authority 
upon others, but he may hold to it and live by it. 
And those beliefs which prove helpful to men in 
general, which make them nobler, sweeter, more 
Christ-like, will pass into the common faith of 
the Church. They will be accepted as part of 
that revelation which is continually unfolded by 
the Divine Spirit, as men are by its power lifted 
into larger life and wider vision. “ Lo, I am 
with you always,” said the Master. And where 
He is, there is not only peace, but life and growth 
and new light for each new day. 


XV. 


GOD KNOWN THROUGH MAN. 

The Biblical way of disclosing the Divine nat¬ 
ure is by taking the highest examples of human 
excellence as types of it. In early ages men r s 
first feeling toward God was one of reverence 
and awe. This awfulness was best expressed to 
their minds by likening him to a king. We can 
hardly imagine how much that word expresses 
to an Oriental, to whom “ the King ” is an ex¬ 
pression for irresponsible and boundless power. 
Then to this conception of God the higher idea 
of justice was added. In a rude and violent age 
the judge who protects the innocent against the 
oppressor seems the highest type of goodness. 
So Abraham gives that title to the Almighty, in 
his noble appeal: “ Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right ? ” A gentler image was suggested 
by pastoral life, in the watchful care of the 
shepherd over his sheep. “ The Lord is my 
Shepherd,” said the youthful David. Then came 
a still higher comparison: “ Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 


108 


A LIVING FAITH. 


that fear him.” Isaiah found a yet more tender 
similitude; he represents God as saying: “As 
one whom his mother comforteth, so will I com¬ 
fort you.” This figure of parenthood is woven 
into all the teaching of Christ. He made “ Our 
Father ” the habitual expression for him whom 
the Jews had been wont to call by the awful 
name of Jehovah. In one of his most striking 
utterances, he said that earthly fatherhood and 
motherhood are only a dim suggestion of the 
infinite wealth of the Divine heart. “ If ye, 
then, being evil,” — in all your earthly imper¬ 
fectness,— “knowhow to give good gifts unto 
your children, how much more shall your Father 
which is in heaven give good things to them that 
ask him ? ” 

This general principle we are to follow in 
filling out our thought of God. We are to take 
whatever is highest in human relationship, what¬ 
ever is noblest and sweetest in human character, 
as a symbol of the Divine disposition. Wher¬ 
ever we see men at their best, we are to say : 
“ God is like that, only better.” Humanity is 
the mirror of Divinity ; when the mirror is most 
perfect, the image is most true. 

Men have greatly suffered when for this true 
method of apprehending God, which the Bible 
uses, they have substituted the operations of the 


GOD KNOWN THROUGH MAN. 


109 


intellect upon abstractions. Just as the heathen 
with their hands hewed out images of wood and 
stone, and worshiped them, so have philosophers 
and theologians with their logical faculties con¬ 
structed dry, bloodless, empty shapes, and set 
them up in place of God. 

Through failing to interpret God by what is 
best in human nature, it has strangely come to 
pass that men have often been really nobler in 
their own characters than they have imagined 
God to be. There are a great many men to-day 
who are themselves of a kind, forgiving, and 
lovable disposition, whose conception of God rep¬ 
resents him as acting on motives and by meth¬ 
ods that would disgrace an Eastern despot. It 
is a blessed thing that men should sometimes 
be able to rise above their beliefs, and to live 
more nobly than their creeds. But, as a general 
rule, men’s lives will correspond somewhat to 
their beliefs. The aim of a Christian life is to 
be like God, and we need to have as high and 
true ideas of God as we can attain to. 

This is the great principle: whatever our 
moral sense recognizes as best in our own ex¬ 
perience, as most beautiful in the character of 
others, that we are to take as an indication of 
what God is like. 

We may illustrate by one or two instances the 


110 


A LIVING FAITH. 


misconceptions that come from not attributing to 
God the qualities which we recognize as excellent 
in men. For example, many people virtually 
suppose that in the present age God’s mercy 
does not extend to most of the inhabitants of 
Africa, Asia, and other unenlightened parts of 
the globe. They suppose that for some mysteri¬ 
ous reason he is letting these people go down by 
millions to eternal death. And yet, we see men 
so strongly moved with compassion for these fel¬ 
low-men, that they will leave home and country, 
and welcome suffering, privation, death itself, to 
lift them into something better. Now, can we 
suppose that the missionary’s love is wider and 
more self-sacrificing than God’s love ? If we, 
being evil, have it in us to give up everything to 
save a few Hottentots or Fijians, does our Father 
who is in heaven care less for them and their 
countless brethren than we do ? Rather, we 
must believe that in his infinite love and eternal 
providence not one of these darkened souls is 
forgotten or slighted. Not a sparrow falleth to 
the ground without his notice: is not a heathen’s 
soul of more value than many sparrows ? 

So, again, Christian friends stand around the 
grave of one who is gone, with unutterable 
tenderness in their hearts, and yet with an aching 
dread of the worst that imagination can conceive. 


GOD KNOWN THROUGH MAN. 


Ill 


They would gladly lay down their lives to insure 
their lost one’s happiness : yet their religion only 
suggests to them the darkest prospect. O ye of 
little faith ! Is God’s love less than yours ? If 
your human hearts are full of unutterable yearn¬ 
ing for your dear one, is the Divine heart less 
tender? “If he were ours again,” you think, 
“we would save him to happiness and goodness, 
though it cost our lives.” That feeling in you 
is but a faint pulse from the Almighty heart: 
your love is as much less than his as your power 
is less : fear not, but trust your God ! 

In interpreting the Divine disposition by our 
own best feelings, we are not to limit the Divine 
methods by strict parallels with our own. The 
tendency of a benevolent disposition in God, the 
end toward which it works, must be the same 
with that of a benevolent disposition in man ; 
but the means by which omniscience works tran¬ 
scend finite knowledge. The best even of human 
affection has in it a heroic quality that can 
prompt to stern action. If a child, bitten by a 
mad dog, runs to. its father, and the father in¬ 
stantly applies to the wound a red-hot iron, we 
do not say that his love is mingled with savage¬ 
ness : we recognize its nobility in the resolution 
with which it arms him. So, when pestilence or 
conflagration sweeps over the earth, instead of 


112 


A LIVING FAITH. 


saying, as men sometimes do, “ God is a God of 
wrath as well as of mercy,” we should know that 
his terrors are but his mercy’s mysterious mes¬ 
sengers. 

The whole universe is our Father’s house. In 
it there are many mansions, and we have seen 
but a few. The rest are hidden from us, and 
what is in them we know not. But this we 
know : they all are our Father’s. 

The Apostle’s richest prayer for his brethren 
was that they might so discern the Divine dis¬ 
position that their lives should be filled and 
inspired by it. “ That ye, being rooted and 
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend 
with all saints what is the breadth and length and 
depth and height; and to know the love of Christ, 
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled 
with all the fullness of God.” 

Understanding something of God’s unconquera¬ 
ble patience, we shall have patience with men 
that nothing can overcome. Seeing how his rain 
and sunshine are freely given to the evil and 
unthankful, we learn to measure our giving not 
by men’s deserts but by their needs. As it grows 
upon us that the whole vast system of nature 
and providence is regulated in every part by the 
one central force of love, we learn to make the 
same force central and sovereign in our lives. As 


GOD KNOWN THROUGH MAN. 


113 


we recognize that our sweetest affections, our 
fairest imaginings, the hopes that soar on boldest 
wing, the peace whose tranquillity is most perfect, 
are manifestations of the Divine life flowing into 
our life — so all that is best in us will receive its 
highest inspiration, and there will shine from us 
upon others something of that light which we 
have caught from the face of God. 



XVI. 


“AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS.” 

The difficulties which men have made about 
God’s forgiveness of sinners disappear if we re¬ 
turn to the simple teachings of Christ. He taught 
his followers: “ Love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to them that hate you; 
that ye may he the children of your Father which 
is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and on the unjust.” Here Christ teaches at 
once what we ought to be and what God is. The 
free forgiveness which perfect love in us inspires 
even toward our enemies is the type of God’s for¬ 
giving love toward sinful men. 

Christ laid great stress on forgiveness as a hu¬ 
man duty. It was consistent with all his teach¬ 
ing that he should do so. For he taught that all 
the virtues were included in love, and the su¬ 
preme manifestation of love is when it overcomes 
our resentment toward those who have wronged 
us or behaved unworthily. 

We might suppose that the grace which stands 


AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS.” 115 


highest in human character would especially be¬ 
long to the Divine character. Christ has not left 
this to be a mere inference. As we have seen, 
he taught positively and expressly that the dis¬ 
position which loves the wrong-doer and seeks his 
good is the very nature of the heavenly Father. 
In the prayer which he gave his disciples, the 
aspiration for the Divine mercy is coupled with 
the most solemn reminder that they show the 
same mercy. Everywhere, the forgiveness which 
God extends is represented by Christ as having 
the same quality as human forgiveness. 

So, too, in Christ himself, embodying at once 
supreme human excellence and the manifestation 
of the Divine nature, forgiveness shines always 
with the same light. There is not a human for¬ 
giveness and a Divine forgiveness which is some¬ 
thing different. The voice that says to Mary, 
weeping at the Saviour’s feet, “ Thy sins are for¬ 
given,” is the same which in the torture of the 
cross prays, “ Father, forgive them.” 

In a word, God pardons us just as he bids us 
to pardon our brethren, — because it is the very 
nature of love to freely forgive. Can anything 
be simpler or more beautiful than this ? Is 
anything more plainly taught by Jesus? Yet 
too often men are told by their religious teachers 
that God forgives them only because there has 


116 


A LIVING FAITH. 


been a purchase, a bargain, an exchange of vic¬ 
tims, and justice has been appeased by the suf¬ 
fering of another. This teaching is not in the 
spirit of the New Testament; it gives a wrong 
and unworthy conception of God ; and it breaks 
the force of Christ’s teaching, which sets God’s 
freely-pardoning love as the example and inspi¬ 
ration of our lives, and in turn reveals God to 
us through what is best and sweetest in our¬ 
selves. 

What must be the attitude of a morally perfect 
being toward those who are morally imperfect ? 
An intense desire for their reclamation — a will¬ 
ingness to do and suffer anything to win tliem 
to goodness. That, Christ teaches us, is God’s 
disposition toward us. In such a disposition 
there is no place for vindictive wrath, no place 
for the infliction of suffering, save as a means of 
cure. It will suffer pain, and it will inflict pain 
if necessary, that it may save and restore. Of 
any other punishment, of any outgoing of wrath 
which is only pain-giving and not curative, the 
Divine disposition can have nothing. All such 
elements Christ bids us banish from ourselves, 
that we may be the children of our Father, in 
whose heart all blessing finds place, and cursing 
has no room. 

Utterly different from this is that conception 


AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS” 117 


of God which men have sometimes set up. They 
have imagined that the primary attitude of a 
morally perfect being toward the morally imper¬ 
fect must be that of condemnation, and disposi¬ 
tion to requite their wrong-doing with suffering. 
They have asked: How can a holy God forgive 
sin ? with the idea that his holiness stood in the 
way of his forgiveness, and must somehow be 
bought off. Christ taught, on the other hand, 
that the holiest is by nature the most forgiving. 
He declared that the disposition to exact an equiv¬ 
alent, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, 
— the precise disposition which men have falsely 
attributed to God, — was too low for men to live 
by, much more for the heavenly Father. In 
Christ’s teaching, holiness — that is, goodness in 
its highest form — is, essentially, love. Love’s 
whole nature is to restore the lost, to heal, to 
save. That disposition which Christ embodied is 
the Father’s eternal nature. 

The hold which the Atonement has on the 
hearts of men, under all the unworthy and dis¬ 
guising theories which have been wrapped about 
it, is this : it gives the assurance that we are not 
left to depend for salvation on our own merits, 
and it touches us with the spectacle of God suffer¬ 
ing for us. All this is most fully contained in 
that view which has just been presented. The 


118 


A LIVING FAITH. 


very substance of this conception is that God 
saves us out of his own love ; that it is not our 
good desert, but the appeal which our need makes 
to his tender compassion, that gives us our hold 
upon him. By as much as we are sinful, and 
therefore miserable, by so much is he drawn to 
help and save us. It is when the child is sickest 
that the mother most yearns over it. Our soul- 
sickness moves the great mother-heart, not to 
smite, but to save. If we are smitten, it is in 
order to save; love, not anger, gives the blow. 
And, again, in this view the cross of Christ stands, 
as ever, the symbol of Divine sorrow borne by 
Divine love. Christ gave himself for us. That 
he might declare to us the Father, he came into 
our low estate, bore the form and spoke the lan¬ 
guage which men understand, lived and suffered 
with his human brothers, and testified his faithful 
love by the last great sorrow, death. And there¬ 
in he revealed to us what God is; how all the 
splendors of his omnipotence are but the servants 
of his love, for that alone to be used or to be laid 
aside ; how he will not rest even in the bliss of 
Deity, but while his creatures suffer will suffer 
with them, that so, at last, he may raise them 
unto himself. 


XVII. 


THE BENEFICENCE OF JUSTICE. 

The idea of Justice is apt to be wholly dissoci¬ 
ated in men’s minds from that of Benevolence. 
The two qualities are regarded, if not as incon¬ 
sistent, yet as having no necessary connection. 
Men will say of a person, “ He is a just man, but 
he is hard and unlovely.” 

Now, there is a kind of justice which is wholly 
without the benevolent element. It is that which 
returns for everything an exact equivalent. This 
sort of justice has a necessary and important part 
in the affairs of life. But Christ’s, law expressly 
forbids us to make it our supreme rule of conduct. 
We are not to say, “ An eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth,” — though that is the very es¬ 
sence of justice, in the narrower sense of the word. 
We are to act on a far different principle — the 
principle of love. Christ set love as the supreme 
and all-sufficient law of human action. And, if 
we consider rightly, we shall find that justice in 
its noblest form is one application of love. It is 
love working by penalty. It is love turning men 


120 


A LIVING FAITH. 


back from evil by pain, when they will not be 
drawn back by gentleness. 

See how justice works in the family. The 
babe begins to feel it, while it is yet in the atmos¬ 
phere of utmost tenderness. While it is com¬ 
passed and held by its parents’ affection, it begins 
to feel sharp consequences when it does wrong. 
And the parent that never punishes loves but 
poorly and weakly. 

What is the aim of that public justice which 
men administer among themselves by laws and 
courts ? It is simply the good of society. Bad 
men are not imprisoned or put to death or other¬ 
wise made to suffer because their suffering is in 
itself a desirable thing. It is in order that the 
community at large may be kept from harm. 
“But,” it may be said, “this public justice, 
though it is beneficent toward the rest of the 
community, is not alway so toward the criminal.” 
That, however, is its imperfection. The crim¬ 
inal’s interest is often sacrificed by the law, not 
because that is a good thing in itself, but only as 
a necessary means to the general good. The dis¬ 
position of Christian society is toward finding 
ways by which the criminal can be benefited by 
his own punishment. There can be no doubt 
that a system of law which should not only pro¬ 
tect innocent men, but should also put every 


THE BENEFICENCE OF JUSTICE. 121 


criminal under reforming and saving influences, 
would be thought by all right-minded people a 
great improvement on our present arrangements. 
Public justice, in other words, is in its ideal aim 
and purpose purely beneficent; and so far as it is 
in practice other than beneficent, it comes short of 
its ideal. 

This quality is the test by which to distinguish 
between justice and its counterfeits. Revenge 
often wears the outward shape of justice. But 
revenge aims at no good beyond the suffering 
which it inflicts ; it delights in the suffering for 
its own sake. Whenever we detect that feeling 
in ourselves — whenever we take pleasure in the 
mere fact of anybody’s suffering, however bad he 
may be — we may know that the feeling comes 
not from God but from the devil. It is of no 
use to cheat ourselves with the idea that it is 
our sentiment of justice which is gratified. Jus¬ 
tice is stern of face, but tender at heart. It hurts 
that it may heal. It is Love girt with the sword, 
but none the less Love. 

It is thus that we are to interpret the quality 
of justice in the Divine nature. It is said, indeed, 
that we are not to interpret God’s nature by 
man’s. But we cannot interpret him in any other 
way. We can have no knowledge of God except 
as we see in him the highest degree of those qual- 


122 A LIVING FAITH. 

ities which, seen in men, excite our love and rev¬ 
erence. To suppose that goodness is one thing 
in us and a totally different thing in God is to cut 
away all possibility of communion, of sympathy, 
of intelligent adoration; it leaves us only an un¬ 
known Something, which we may slavishly fear, 
but cannot truly love or aspire toward. 

If, in man, the highest justice is not a mere 
rendering of like for like — an awarding of desert 
— but, rather, beneficence working by penalty, 
the disposition that uses sharp remedies to save 
the life, the child not of wrath but of mercy — 
then we must believe this quality to be the reflec¬ 
tion of God’s disposition, a pulsation in us of his 
heart. We must believe that in him, too, justice 
is but one aspect of supreme and sovereign love. 
So believing, we shall not cease to look with awe 
on the retributive side of his administration. 
Pain, and loss, and suffering, are terrible facts. 
Penalty there certainly is in the universe. But 
whether the contemplation of it moves us toward 
frenzy and despair, or toward reverent submis¬ 
sion, depends on our rightly understanding its 
motive. That God punishes is certain. What 
we must stay our hearts on is, that he punishes 
as a father. That he does nothing but in love, 
that his punishments are but the servants of his 
goodness, is as sure as that he is God. 


THE BENEFICENCE OF JUSTICE. 123 


We need a right belief about this, for the sake 
of our own characters. What we attribute to 
God we inevitably aspire to as the highest con¬ 
dition for ourselves. If we suppose his justice to 
be vindictive — to inflict suffering which has no 
outcome of good — we shall ourselves grow into 
a like disposition. We shall exercise our selfish 
and vindictive passions under the garb of relig¬ 
ion. We shall withhold our pity and help from 
those who most need it — the men who have gone 
most wrong. When we feel in our hearts that no 
living creature is outside of God’s tender compas¬ 
sion, we are in the way of being inspired with a 
like spirit in our own actions. 

Men sometimes fear such views as these, as 
involving a weakening and letting down of the 
severer virtues. To call justice a form of love 
seems to them to do away with the reality of 
justice altogether. Ah, how little we know the 
might and majesty of love ! How far we are 
from realizing that it is the strongest thing in 
the universe ! Love weak ? By it the miracles 
of life are wrought. By it man treads the world 
under his feet, and mounts upward to the bosom 
of God. Love weak ? It is stronger than death, 
stronger than sin, strong with the power of God 
himself. He sits on the throne of infinity ; he 
fills and inspires and guides the whole universe; 


124 


A LIVING FAITH. 


and he declares, “ I am Love.” And when 
we say that justice is a form of love, we lift it 
out of things that fail and perish, and clothe it 
with the glory and all-subduing might of Di¬ 
vinity. 


XVIII. 


THE WRATH OF GOD. 

When men enforce conclusions which they have 
drawn from the Scriptures without regard to 
the intimations of reason and experience, they 
greatly wrong the Scriptures. The Bible’s tran¬ 
scendent power is in this: that it speaks home to 
the highest consciousness of man, and that all 
the ripest experience of the race bears witness 
to the truths it utters. 

Thus, there runs through all the Scriptures a 
denunciation of Divine wrath against sin. Out 
of this teaching, theologians have fashioned dog¬ 
mas so horrible, so hopeless, so enshrouding the 
universe in gloom, that men’s hearts rebelled 
and said, “ It cannot be true.” But the theolo¬ 
gians have had for all protests, arguments, and 
appeals, a stereotyped answer : “ The Bible says 
so.” Now, what has been the consequence of 
thus attempting to array the Bible against the 
reason, the aspirations, the instincts of human¬ 
ity? It has been, in part, to sustain the darkest 
views of the destiny of mankind; and also to 


126 


A LIVING FAITH. 


provoke a reaction which may go to the other 
extreme, may lead men to ignore all the ele¬ 
ment of penalty, and to substitute rose-colored 
fancies for the august realities of life. We who 
are accustomed to look upon the Divine love in 
its aspects of gentleness and sweetness need to 
enter into that view which the Scriptures them¬ 
selves present of the retributive element in the 
Divine government. That tremendous word, the 
wrath of Grod , should stand for a tremendous 
reality. What is it ? 

Every reader of the Bible must recognize the 
constant presence of the idea. Historian, proph¬ 
et, evangelist, and Christ himself, utter warn¬ 
ings as intense and emphatic as their promises. 
That God is against evil, that he visits con¬ 
demnation and wrath upon wrong-doers, that he 
is a fire to smite the wicked — this belongs to 
the very essence of that teaching which all the 
Scriptures declare. Is this the expression of an 
eternal truth, or of something that has been su¬ 
perseded in the growing wisdom of mankind ? 

The Hebrew habit of mind was to refer every¬ 
thing especially notable to the immediate action 
of God. High hills were “ the hills of the 
Lord,” the cedars of Lebanon were “ the trees of 
the Lord,” and so everywhere they interpreted 
nature and life as in the closest relation to the 


THE WRATH OF GOD. 


127 


Divine power. The fashion of thought has 
changed somewhat, but in a different language 
men still testify to the great facts which sank 
into the Hebrew mind. All that we in our 
day know of the workings of human society, all 
the revelations of natural science, and our deep¬ 
est personal experiences, bear witness to the 
truth that sin brings suffering . The most ter¬ 
rible words of Scripture, words that we almost 
shrink from taking upon our lips, are not more 
terrible than what we may see and feel for our¬ 
selves of the consequences of wrong-doing. 

All men, whether they care anything about 
religion or not, understand perfectly well that 
a man can injure himself by his own actions. 
When a young man stands at the beginning of 
his manhood, every one knows that by failing in 
industry, temperance, honesty, he can make a 
wreck of himself. Society itself stands guard 
over the lower laws of morality, and punishes 
their violation. And that in which the best 
thinkers of every school, Christian or unchris¬ 
tian, are agreed is this: that in the right devel¬ 
opment of character — in purity, fidelity, honor, 
magnanimity, sympathy, aspiration—is the high¬ 
est success in life; and that to fail in these is to 
incur the worst of evils. 

Material science has in our day brought into 


128 


A LIVING FAITH. 


prominence the idea of unchanging Law. For 
this its tendencies have been assailed by those 
who see in the idea of inexorable Law a denial of 
Divine forgiveness and mercy. Now, first, we 
must note that the declarations of science in 
this matter are, to a great extent, simple state¬ 
ments of fact. Wherever its researches extend, 
it finds that consequences do inexorably follow 
causes, whether it suits our theories or not. 
And if, laying aside the theories which are of 
human invention, we look at these facts as be¬ 
longing to the Divine order of the universe, and 
inquire into their significance, we come to this : 
to every violation of the laws of matter or of 
spirit there are attached consequences of evil 
from which there is absolutely no escape. The 
evil may in its turn be followed by good; there 
may, at last, be healing and recovery — but, so 
surely as the night follows the day, the breach of 
law draws down the penalty of law. Disregard 
the conditions of bodily health, and you shall 
surely suffer; transgress the principles of con¬ 
duct — be false, be mean, be impure, be selfish 
— and you shall most surely in the very act suf¬ 
fer injury to your own soul; there shall be dete¬ 
rioration, weakening, loss, from which nothing in 
earth or heaven is going to save you. 

Take, again, as an instance and indication of 


THE WRATH OF GOD. 


129 


the government of the universe, the sentiment 
of the human mind, in its highest state, toward 
willful and flagrant wrong-doing. And here we 
must be very careful not to confound the lower 
moods with the higher. We must throw out all 
selfish and unworthy resentments. We are to 
enter into the full spirit of Christ’s warning that 
we do not assume the judgment-seat of the All- 
seeing ; we are to receive the kindred lesson 
from the disclosures of modern investigation, 
showing how the will is hampered by inherited 
traits and physical conditions; in a word, we are 
to carry the amplest and purest charity into 
our sentiment toward the worst of wrong-doers. 
And yet, there is in every unperverted human 
heart a quality which can flame like lightning 
against falsehood and cruelty and wrong. There 
are crimes against humanity before which every 
decent man and woman kindles into a white 
heat. We should be farther from God and 
nearer to the brutes if we did not. And there is 
a mood wherein before great wickedness we feel, 
even deeper than indignation, an unspeakable 
pity. The awfulness of sin ! the misery of it! 
We never know how awful, how miserable it is, 
until in sympathy we stand beside the sinner. 

Or we may look at the sentences which men 
pronounce upon themselves. What man that 
9 


130 


A LIVING FAITH. 


lias had any experience in earnest effort after a 
higher life has not stood before the bar of his 
own conscience, crushed by the sense of his un¬ 
worthiness ? A modern writer— Frances Power 
Cobbe — has suggested this thought: that the 
punishment of the next life may consist simply 
in a clear realization of what our sins have been ; 
that therein may consist the keenest suffering of 
which the soul is capable; that we may, in the 
very pain of it, so recognize the justice of it as 
not to wish to escape; and that in the rebound 
from the evil of sin thus seen and felt may lie 
our escape from its power. The thought in its 
definite form may be taken as a flight of fancy 
only, but the force with which it appeals to the 
imagination indicates what in our deepest hearts 
we judge of ourselves. 

The contemplation of such facts as these car¬ 
ries us back toward the idea of “ the wrath of 
God” which the Scriptures express. We con¬ 
strue that idea in this way : that God’s wrath is 
not set over against his love as contrary to it, 
but is itself a part of the action of love toward 
wickedness. We believe that the very lightning 
of Divine wrath smites that it may save. But 
none the less, it smites ! And that man who 
hardens himself in wrong-doing is drawing down 
penalty whose very beneficence will work by 


THE WRATH OF GOD. 


131 


piercing him with sorrows. God has set the 
whole order of creation to bring men to good¬ 
ness ; and he who plunges into debauchery, into 
cruelty, nay, into smooth selfishness, or indolence 
even, is setting himself where the forces of the 
universe bear against him. Nor let any man de¬ 
ceive himself with the thought that because the 
general spirit of his life is right his minor short¬ 
comings shall bear no bitter fruit. No man 
sins and does not suffer for it. Toward our in¬ 
firmity God has infinite tenderness, but he never 
lets us do wrong and escape the evil consequence. 
This is his kindness towards us: that by his 
chastisements he forever seeks to turn us back 
into the way that leads to blessedness. 

In all ages the mind of man has sought to 
pierce through the outer shows of things, to rise 
beyond that which is seen, and to discern him 
who sits central and sovereign over all. Clouds 
and darkness are about him, but he is light un¬ 
speakable. That awful presence who may look 
upon or name ? According as our faces are set 
toward him or away from him, so is he to us. 
When from the radiant and ineffable beauty of 
holiness we turn away to seek the things of sin, 
thick darkness falls upon us; thunders and 
lightnings shake our souls; we taste the wrath 
of God, and he is to us a consuming fire. And 


132 


A LIVING FAITH. 


when, giving up all else, we set our souls to seek 
and do what is right, the clouds are bathed in 
sunlight and crowned with the rainbow; we see 
the great white throne and him who sits thereon ; 
and we know that the sun and center and sov¬ 
ereign of the universe is Love. 


XIX. 


A DYING BELIEF. 

The history of the doctrine of endless punish¬ 
ment in early times has been elaborately dis¬ 
cussed in “ The Christian Union.” The pres¬ 
ent phase of its history may, I think, be summed 
up in this: it is rapidly dying out of the minds 
of men. 

A superficial view might give an opposite im¬ 
pression. The doctrine still stands in the creeds 
of almost the entire Christian Church. The 
avowed dissenters from it are in numbers an in¬ 
significant minority. But the very body which 
to the eye presents this solid front is honey¬ 
combed with doubt and disbelief. The Church 
to-day only half believes in the endlessness of 
future punishment. The time can hardly be dis¬ 
tant when it will wholly reject the doctrine. 

A few broad facts may be mentioned in sup¬ 
port of this conclusion. First, the alteration 
which within a recent period has taken place in 
the form of the doctrine, among its avowed sup¬ 
porters, is immense, and is the augury of a still 


134 


A LIVING FAITH. 


more radical change. It is not long since a hell 
of literal fire was generally preached. Now, that 
idea is rejected even among the most orthodox. 
What has produced this change ? Largely the 
recoil of the moral sense from a thing too horrible 
to be true. To modern thought there is no more 
odious figure than the executioner, under the bar¬ 
barous laws of the Middle Ages, torturing his vic¬ 
tim with the rack and the fire; and the concep¬ 
tion of the Almighty as doing the same on an 
infinite scale and forever was too repulsive for 
the Christian mind to retain. It was abandoned 
because enlightened Christian feeling declared 
that it could not be true ; and men’s intellects, 
following in the wake of their moral sentiments, 
learned to take as figurative texts which had for¬ 
merly been held to teach a literal lake of fire. 

The identical sentiment which overthrew the 
idea of endless physical torment tends irresistibly 
to destroy the belief in endless spiritual torment. 
The former gave way first, simply because it 
appeals more strikingly to the imagination. As 
men come to feel that spiritual suffering, with 
hope forever banished and moral corruption for¬ 
ever fastened on the soul, is worse than any lake 
of fire, they will repel the idea that God can shut 
up his creatures in the one any more than in the 
other. 


A DYING BELIEF. 


135 


Another sign of the change of belief is the 
change in the practical attitude of the Church. I 
think the time is very recent when no one who 
disbelieved in eternal punishment could look for 
admission to an Orthodox church. That is chang¬ 
ing fast. Even the Presbyterian Church, the es¬ 
pecial champion of orthodoxy, often admits to its 
membership persons who admit their unsound¬ 
ness on this point. What the Presbyterian 
Church does to some extent, the other Orthodox 
churches do more freely. Partly the alteration 
is due simply to an increasing spirit of toleration ; 
but it also indicates the actual growth of a new 
belief within the religious community. The pul¬ 
pit as yet is guarded against the heresy, but even 
there the line of defense is wavering. So, again, 
I might point to the development within a cen¬ 
tury of the Universalist and Unitarian churches, 
and to the unmistakable tendency toward frater¬ 
nal relations between that element in those bodies 
which stands for earnest religion and the element 
in the old churches which stands for wide Chris¬ 
tian catholicity. Going beyond our national lim¬ 
its, it is well known that in Germany the more 
hopeful belief as to the future world is strong 
among men of scholarship and evangelical piety. 
In England, that belief has a firm foothold within 
the Established Church ; and among the Dissen- 


186 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ters the Independent clergy, at least, tend very 
largely to restorationist or annihilationist views. 

This also is to be said: the most promising 
types of practical Christianity at this time carry 
in themselves the ripening germs of an utter de¬ 
nial of the doctrine of eternal perdition. Within 
the old lines and under the shadow of the old 
creeds there has sprung up a phase of Christianity 
which unites vital spiritual faith, and ardent prac¬ 
tical activity, with new forms of thought. It is 
one of those rejuvenations which are the marvel 
and the glory of the history of Christianity. 
Now, as in the days of Luther, corruptions of be¬ 
lief are being sloughed off; the spirit of Christ is 
clothing itself with new power, and lifting men 
into clearer light and sweeter disposition and 
more useful life. The movement is not local. It 
can be traced in all churches, and outside of the 
churches, and in all lands. Its universal charac¬ 
teristic is a spirit of practical benevolence, and, 
corresponding to this, a conception of God which 
clothes him more gloriously than before to the 
thoughts of men, and expresses, with a fullness 
and emphasis unfelt before, that in his inmost nat¬ 
ure and his whole administration he is Almighty 
Love. That conception, and the new life which 
it is inspiring in the world, carries with it ulti¬ 
mately, as surely as the rising sun brings the ban- 


A DYING BELIEF. 


137 


ishment of darkness, the denial of a hopeless eter¬ 
nity of misery and sin for any of God’s creatures. 

From such various considerations as these, it 
seems evident that the doctrine of eternal punish¬ 
ment is perishing from the living belief of men. 
The cause of its decadence is that the moral sense 
of mankind has outgrown it. It is perishing as 
the belief in witchcraft did; as the belief in the 
rightfulness of slavery did; as the belief that 
God created some men expressly that they might 
be damned for his own glory is perishing. There 
comes a time, as mankind are by the Divine 
Spirit raised into nobler ways of thought and 
feeling, when immoral and unworthy ideas are 
quietly left behind by the better mind of the 
race. It is not argument, it is not historical 
proof, it is not exposition of the letter of Script¬ 
ure, that kills them. They perish because they 
stand convicted before enlightened Christian feel¬ 
ing as unworthy to endure. 

The doctrine that at the end of this life God 
shuts up some men to an eternity of suffering and 
of sin cannot maintain itself before the tribunal 
of the Christian mind or heart. It is essentially 
and utterly foreign to any worthy conception of 
God. Nothing is weaker than the cry of “ senti¬ 
mentalism ” raised against such statements. It 
is not the weak and unworthy side of human nat- 


138 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ure that protests against the dogma. It is the 
highest sense of justice, the deepest movement of 
the mind toward apprehending a perfect God, 
that is repelled and shocked by the doctrine. It 
is the holiest emotions of the soul that recoil most 
intensely from this gospel of despair. The argu¬ 
ments which seek to justify it to the reason and 
conscience wither and shrink in the light of calm 
reason. There are those who refuse to consider 
God as embodied Love, from a fancy that love in 
its sublimest and divine development lacks some¬ 
thing of strength, and must be supplemented by 
a justice which is not of love. But if we view 
God as embodied justice, the case stands the same. 
Every conception of justice is outraged by the 
idea of an eternity of suffering as the award for 
the sins of this brief life. To say that sin is an 
infinite evil and therefore merits infinite punish¬ 
ment is a quibbling as paltry as the conclusion is 
dreadful. It may be said that God only knows 
the evil of sin. If sin then be so transcendently 
evil, are we to suppose that the Holy One uses 
his omnipotence to make it perpetual ? The worst 
feature in the doctrine seems to be strangely over¬ 
looked by its defenders. That a just God should 
be supposed to inflict endless suffering for the 
sins of this life is bad enough ; but what shall we 
say of the idea that a holy God shuts men up to 


A DYING BELIEF. 


139 


sin forever ? Any right thought of the Almighty 
brings us to this, that his whole infinitude of be¬ 
ing is pledged to bringing his creatures out of sin 
into holiness. He cannot do other than this and 
be God. His whole administration of heaven and 
earth and hell must look to this. Otherwise, God 
would be less good than he calls his own creatures 
to be, less good than some of them actually are. 
To say that the wicked work out their own end- 
less misery without his interference is simply to 
say that he lets the universe slip out of his hands 
just where it needs him most. The assumption 
that the resources of Omnipotence are exhausted 
in the reclaiming influences of this life is totally 
without foundation in observation of human nat¬ 
ure or in any worthy conception of the Infinite 
One. All these attempted explanations are but 
the feeblest makeshifts to bolster up an assertion 
against which the moral sense steadily protests. 
Whatever line of honest and earnest thought we 
follow, the mind returns to its first position. The 
first impulse of the heart is the last word of the 
intellect — the doctrine is a slander upon God. 

The supporters of the dogma are driven always 
to one last resort. They appeal to the letter of 
Scripture, as conclusive against the utterances of 
feeling and of reason. Now, without going at 
present into the question of Scriptual interpre- 


140 


A LIVING FAITH. 


tation, there is one thing to be said. The ap¬ 
peal from the enlightened reason and moral sense 
of mankind to the letter of Scripture has never 
been successful and never can be. The issue has 
been tried again and again, and always with the 
same result. Mankind has followed the guidance 
of its own highest intelligence — its reason, its 
conscience, its moral sense — and learned to use 
the Scripture in the light of these. Witchcraft, 
slavery, polygamy, despotism, a hundred delu¬ 
sions and a hundred abuses, have been honestly 
defended from the Scriptures by men who thought 
the Scriptures were meant to supersede reason 
and conscience and the Divine Spirit in the hu¬ 
man heart. And these men were not fools. As 
interpreters of the mere letter of the Scripture, 
some of them were highly competent. Mankind 
could never have got out of some of its ruts if it 
had not, by a divinely implanted instinct, trusted 
its own best intelligence and moral sense against 
what seemed to be inspired teaching. 

It seems to me, on the whole, better and safer 
to use the Scriptures in the light of our common 
sense, conscience, and moral judgment, than to 
rely solely on the illumination afforded by the 
grammarians and dictionary-makers. In either 
case one may go wrong. But on such a subject 
as the eternal destiny of the race, it seems to me 


A DYING BELIEF. 


141 


at least as satisfactory and reasonable to ask our 
own minds what is consistent with supreme be¬ 
neficence and goodness, as to study the probable 
correctness of Aristotle’s etymology of aion . 

Further, this is to be said: whatever construc¬ 
tion be put upon the letter of Scripture, the hope 
of universal restoration gets its strongest impulse 
from the spirit of the New Testament. The sure 
foundation of that hope is the character of God 
as revealed by Jesus. In the world, as we see it, 
evil appears so strong that if we had only sight to 
guide us we might indeed suppose evil as ordinary 
as good. It is the very substance of the Chris¬ 
tian revelation, that behind all the troubles and 
perplexities which beset us an omnipotent bene¬ 
ficence is guiding all. So the New Testament is 
beyond any other the book of hope. Paul sets 
hope along with faith and love as unfailing and 
immortal. Christian love in its perfection is as 
broad as the whole human race, and Christian 
hope in its true development can be no narrower. 

The decline and probable extinction of the 
dogma of eternal punishment seems to me a 
ground for the deepest rejoicing. It is the re¬ 
moval from the Divine Father of the worst im¬ 
putation that his children ever cast upon him. It 
takes away a weight which has rested with gloom 
unspeakable on countless tender hearts. It opens 


142 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the way — it is not necessarily and of itself the 
way, but it opens the way — to a religion not 
only of greater joy, but of firmer faith and more 
beneficent activity, than we have yet had. I be¬ 
lieve too that as one effect it will give greater force 
to all the motives derived from the future life — 
those of fear as well as those of hope. At pres¬ 
ent there is very little effective use of the motive 
of fear by intelligent preachers, because they are 
overweighted by the excessive severity of the 
doctrine they profess. Even in attempting to 
preach it they recoil; their whole strength goes 
in nerving themselves up to an intellectual as¬ 
sent, and they have not strength to strike with 
the weapon whose weight they can barely sus¬ 
tain. I believe that the solemn declarations and 
awful imagery of Scripture will take on a new 
force and reality when stripped of the attribute 
of endless and unfruitful suffering which now 
repels from them altogether. And especially I 
believe that nothing will more promote the 
spread of living Christianity among men than 
divesting it of this excrescence. The men who 
zealously maintain this doctrine, with the idea 
that in so doing they are guarding the substance 
of Christianity, seem to me absolutely mistaken. 
They are like men in an overladen ship labor¬ 
ing in a storm, who should carefully protect the 


A DYING BELIEF. 


143 


worse than useless ballast that is dragging the 
vessel down. Christianity must prevail over its 
adversaries by purifying itself — first in the lives 
of its members, and next in its conceptions of 
truth. The really dangerous unbelief of the 
time is that which ignores God and leaves the 
moral element out of the government of the 
universe. It is to be overcome by a presenta¬ 
tion of moral truth which will irresistibly attract 
men by its nobility and self-evident value. Cen¬ 
tral in such a presentation must be the character 
of God, and any conception of God which makes 
him leave a part of his creatures to misery which 
is fruitless and sin which is endless will fail, as it 
ought to fail, to command the belief of men. 


Note. [The following, written as a sequel to the foregoing article 
(which appeared not as an editorial but as a communication), has 
never before been published.] 

Some months ago there appeared in the Christian Union 
an article by the present writer entitled ‘ ‘ A Dying Be¬ 
lief,” expressing the conviction that the doctrine of end¬ 
less punishment is fast losing its hold on the minds of men, 
and that as a false and unchristian belief it deserves to 
perish. From private sources I have received a number of 
sympathetic responses. Some of these strikingly disclose 
what I had partly known before, that there are many per¬ 
sons, thoughtful and sensitive, who are heavily burdened 



144 


A LIVING FAITH. 


and at times almost crushed by a sense of the doom which 
they have been taught hangs over a part of the universe. 
Several instances have come to my knowledge in which a 
hope of something better has struggled up in the heart, and 
been tremblingly cherished, yet guarded as a secret from 
nearest friends, to whom it would seem a dangerous and 
almost wicked error. To some such solitary souls, I am 
glad to know, the outspoken faith of another has brought 
some comfort. It is partly in the hope of giving further 
help to such that I now return to the subject. But I have 
also a broader reason, in the conviction that, while the 
faith for which I stand may be misapprehended or re¬ 
ceived in a wrong way, and so work mischief—on the 
other hand, when rightly understood and received, it is 
full of unspeakable comfort and help for all. 

One distinction needs to be strongly drawn. The rejec¬ 
tion of eternal punishment does not by any means involve 
the rejection of future punishment. As in this life pain is 
one of the great instruments by which our Heavenly Father 
trains us into goodness, so both Scripture and reason teach 
that in the life to come those who have willfully resisted 
the Divine voice will meet the stern discipline of suffering. 
That every sin brings suffering upon the wrong-doer ; that 
every sin which is allowed to ripen into habit must draw 
down a bitter retribution, in this life or in the life to come; 
and that all these retributions are God’s efficient instru¬ 
ments to restore and save us — this seems to me the truth 
about punishment. 

In reading the arguments lately presented in support of 
the old doctrine, I am struck with this: that all of them 
which carry any respectable weight are simply an appeal 
to Scriptural authority. The attempts to reconcile the 
doctrine to human ideas of justice and to the Christian 


A DYING BELIEF. 


145 


idea of God are hardly strong enough to call for any an¬ 
swer. All of them involve some such baseless assumption 
as, for example, that the whole of God’s resources are em¬ 
ployed to reclaim men in this life. To one who looks at 
the actual condition of the human race, and sees the dis¬ 
advantages of inherited infirmity and social misadjustment 
that beset men even in the most favored communities, the 
notion that if a man goes out of this life unreclaimed 
there, is nothing left for him in the resources of omnipo¬ 
tence and eternity must seem the idlest chimera of the 
brain. 

Another plea by which it is sought to reconcile this doc¬ 
trine to the moral sense is the assertion that sin is an im¬ 
measurable evil. It is because it is so fearful an evil that 
we believe that the Holy One will give the whole energy 
of his being to save men from it. He does not hate sinful 
man, but loves him with an everlasting love. To abhor 
the sinner is infernal; to abhor sin, and therefore not to 
abandon a single human soul to its dominion — that is 
Divine. 

One of the professors of theology under whom I studied 
said to his class: “If we had only human reason to guide 
us on the subject, I think we could not maintain the doc¬ 
trine of endless punishment. I fully accept that doctrine, 
but I do so solely on the testimony of Scripture.” That, 
I am satisfied, is the only ground on which the doctrine 
can with so much as a show of reason be maintained; and 
to place it on that ground alone is to assure its speedy 
abandonment by men. 

When it is said, “ This doctrine is condemned by the 
most sober judgment of reason, and by the deepest in¬ 
stinct of Christian feeling; it is repugnant to that concep¬ 
tion of God which we have learned from Christ; the sense 
10 


146 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of justice protests against it; the faith in Divine love re¬ 
volts from it ” — it is no sufficient answer to these things 
to say “ The Bible asserts it.” 

How do the moral and spiritual teachings of the Script¬ 
ures command our assent ? Not by any weight of exter¬ 
nal testimony, but by the response which their general 
tenor awakens in all that is best and deepest in us. When 
in the name of the Scriptures an idea is presented against 
which the best and deepest instinct of mankind protests, 
there is but one conclusion. We say, “ Either you have 
misinterpreted the message, or the message, in so far, is 
not from God.” It will be said that this is setting human 
reason and feeling to judge of God. I answer, God can only 
reveal himself through human reason and feeling. The 
condition by which alone we surely recognize a Divine 
revelation is that it commends itself to our highest sense 
of what is right. Failing in that, it must be said, “ The 
voice is not of God, but of man.” 

I take this broad ground, that in any question involving 
moral elements the final arbiter must be the enlightened 
Christian consciousness of mankind, and not the letter of 
Scripture. It seems to me that the purpose of Christ 
was to lead men into an exalted spiritual state, in which 
the human mind should he in close union with the Di¬ 
vine Spirit, deriving from it all moral energy and knowl¬ 
edge of moral truth. As an instrument in brinodncr me n 
into that state, the record of the life and teaching; of 
Christ and his immediate disciples has a most transcendent 
value. But it appears to me a perversion to regard that 
record as embodying in itself the complete revelation; it 
is rather the introduction to a perpetual and living revela¬ 
tion within the souls of men. 

The testimony of the Scriptures is most emphatic and 


A DYING BELIEF. 


147 


constant as to the terribleness of sin and of the woe which 
it brings. Moses and the Prophets, Christ and the Apos¬ 
tles, are wholly at one upon this. The chief stress of the 
entire Scriptures is thrown upon the importance of moral 
distinctions, the blessedness of goodness and the misery of 
wrong-doing. To let go of this is indeed to lose ourselves 
wholly. The teaching that makes light of sin is contrary 
to Scripture, contrary to the evidence of facts and of hu¬ 
man consciousness, and dangerous to the most vital inter- 
ests of mankind. But the question which now engages us 
is this: does the Divine effort for the deliverance of men 
from this sinful state cease or become ineffectual with the 
close of the earthly life ? 

I apprehend that the point where believing souls hesi¬ 
tate longest is upon the express teaching of Christ. The 
belief in the final salvation of all men seems to them to 
set aside his authority, and so to “ take away their Lord.” 
I believe that instead of taking him away it will bring him 
nearer to them. 

The passages which ring like a knell in so many hearts, 
“ Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,” “ And 
these shall go away into everlasting punishment,” and 
the like, occur in one of the most figurative and unexact 
methods of speech that exists in literature. It is hard for 
us, with our Occidental, logical, accurate habits of speech, 
to enter into the poetical and highly colored style in which 
Orientals naturally express themselves, and in which a 
large part of the Scriptures is written. The Bible is the 
last book in the world that should be interpreted by the 
principles we apply to a legal contract or a legislative en¬ 
actment. Every page of the Gospels illustrates this. We 
are told: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye 
of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 


148 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of Heaven.” If a man takes our cloak, we are to give 
him our coat. Simon Peter is on one occasion addressed 
as “ Satan.” A man must hate his father and mother 
and wife and children, or he cannot be a true disciple. 
Now, these figurative expressions dd not mislead us, when 
we enter into the spirit and style of the speaker. But 
what could be idler than to stickle for the exact, literal, 
etymological sense of the words that such a speaker em¬ 
ploys ? Yet it is by such a method of interpretation that 
such passages as Matthew 25: 46 have been made to ex¬ 
plicitly teach a literal eternity of punishment. To me 
they no more teach it than the same parable teaches a lit¬ 
eral lake of fire. 

Still, it will be said that Jesus, if he did not teach end¬ 
less punishment, certainly did not teach a final recovery 
for all. But neither did he teach a great many things 
which are to us an essential part of Christian faith and 
practice. It is a mistake to look to his recorded words 
for a full and perfect development of all religious truth. 
He did not give them as such. At the last he said most 
expressly that he had “ many things ” to say, which his 
disciples could not yet bear. His parting promise was that 
the Divine Spirit should dwell in his people and guide them 
into all truth. We see that great progress in new truth 
was made by his disciples after his death. The great idea 
which was so central in Paul’s work, and on which the 
whole future of Christianity depended, that the ceremonial 
law was superseded, and that the Christian Church was 
not Jewish but universal, found no expression in the life¬ 
time of Jesus. He planted the seed and left it to germi¬ 
nate. So of other great spiritual and ethical ideas. He 
left untouched by any direct censure customs and institu¬ 
tions which the growing spirit of his religion found utterly 


A DYING BELIEF. 


149 


repugnant. He did not attack slavery, and it was centu¬ 
ries before the truth fully dawned upon the Church that 
slavery was essentially unchristian. He did not denounce 
war. In a hundred directions he left the truth to spring 
up and ripen from the seed which he planted. 

Now, of all the truth which he declared, this is central, 
that man is the child of God; that it is his need and help¬ 
lessness that moves the Divine heart to compassion; that 
it is not the just man but the prodigal and outcast whom 
Christ came to save. And that to seek and save the lost 
is the essential and eternal nature of God; that while one 
wandering child remains unreclaimed the whole energy of 
the Divine Nature is given for its recovery; and that this 
Almighty Love will in the end win absolute victory over evil, 
and save its children unto the uttermost — this faith springs 
from the teaching of Christ as surely as the autumn har¬ 
vest follows the sowing of spring. 

Have we no Jesus but him of Galilee and Jerusalem ? 
Does he live for us only in what he did and said in those 
three years ? Or is he a living, ever-present Christ ? To 
no one would I so gladly go with this great hope of salvation 
for all men as unto Jesus were he upon the earth. To no 
ear would I so gladly pour out the yearning desire, the un¬ 
quenchable hope, the faith that conquers fear, as to his. 
And this very yearning and hope I do take to my Father in 
heaven, to him whom Jesus has revealed to me, and be¬ 
fore that Father’s face the hope blooms into a faith immor¬ 
tal and serene. 

All deep and genuine religious belief is wrought out in 
personal experience, and becomes matter less of outward 
proof than of inward knowledge. And this confidence 
that the universe is God’s from center to circumference, 
that despair of any is faithlessness toward Him — this be- 


150 


A LIVING FAITH. 


lief works itself into the warp and woof of the soul. It is 
the full thought of the exhaustless power of Almighty Love 
that best inspires a tireless love in us. Every great sen¬ 
timent and principle of life finds in this thought its best 
completion and highest inspiration. As we learn what 
brotherhood means, we feel that perfect happiness would 
be absolutely impossible for us while one human soul re¬ 
mained in pain and sin. Our patience, sometimes almost 
outworn, gets new life from the sense of that infinite pa¬ 
tience that broods over wayward men through all the ages, 
and wins in every heart its victory at last. Defeat cannot 
crush us, the world travailing in pain cannot dismay us, 
our own sin cannot gain the mastery over us, when we en¬ 
ter into the full sense of what God is, and to what end he 
is guiding his universe. 


XX. 


THE SPIRIT OF JUDAISM. 

The early history of the Jewish people is full 
of instruction, if, instead of servile confinement 
to its details, we get a broad view of its place 
in the general history of mankind. We can 
best appreciate the work which was wrought 
through the Jews if we compare their character¬ 
istics with those of two other great nations of 
antiquity, the Greeks and Romans. They, too, 
not less truly than the Jews, had a place in the 
Divine education of the race. 

The especial genius of the Romans was for 
war and government. The Roman character was 
marked by executive ability and by indomitable 
will. Rome’s typical great men — her Scipios, 
Catos, Caesars — were men of affairs, born to 
handle armies and administer States. This peo¬ 
ple, then, reduced the world to peace by conquer¬ 
ing it, and kept it at peace by their capacity for 
government. Thus was laid the necessary foun¬ 
dation of wide and permanent civilization. In 
the universal tumult of wars that had preceded, 


152 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the attainments of the highest peoples were lost 
to the rest, as their possessors were either crushed 
out or shut up in isolation. The strong Roman 
hand brought in peace and order — the time 
for liberty had not come. The Romans opened 
roads by which the treasures of Judaea and Greece 
were distributed over the ancient world. Dying, 
Rome bequeathed to after ages lasting principles 
of law and government, which after a time of 
chaos entered into the foundations of modern 
society. 

The work of the Greeks was very different. 
It is impossible to include in any single phrase 
the achievements of this brilliant and wonderful 
people. But, more than anything else, they 
trained and inspired the human intellect. Greece 
taught mankind to think. The greatest of Gre¬ 
cian heroes is Socrates, who spent his life in 
seeking truth and laid down his life a martyr 
of truth. But his self-sacrifice not only lifts him 
above his countrymen ; it separates him from 
them in characteristic quality. To seek truth by 
intellectual inquiry was eminently a Greek trait, 
but to sacrifice life for the truth was not at all 
Greek. Plato is the better representative of his 
nation — a philosopher, but not a martyr. Yet 
Plato’s philosophy has some of the noblest moral 
qualities. Wisdom, as he viewed it, included all 


THE SPIRIT OF JUDAISM. 


153 


virtue and heroism and spiritual aspiration. And 
herein he too differs from the general Greek type. 
The moral ardor of Socrates and Plato was their 
own, and may almost be said to have perished 
with them. The speculative, inquiring disposi¬ 
tion was the Greek characteristic. All logical 
and systematic thought owes its beginning to 
that people. Its language gave new powers to 
the human mind. 

Turning now to Judsea, we find that, while the 
highest word of Greece was Wisdom, the great 
word of the Jews was Holiness. And what to the 
Jewish mind was the meaning of “ holiness ? ” 
We must not carry into the word as at first used 
all the fullness of signification which it now has 
to us. But at the earliest we find in it the idea 
of human character as determined by man’s rela¬ 
tion to God. 

The first meaning of the Hebrew word “ holy ” 
is pure, clean . To this was soon added the idea 
of set apart to God, consecrated. Here in one 
word we have the great formative idea of Juda¬ 
ism. It was the idea of personal consecration to 
the Deity, and the expression of that consecration 
by personal purity. We have here the germ of the 
highest conception of life we have yet reached; 
the conception, namely, of right action in every 
relation, flowing out of the immediate commun- 


154 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ion of man with the Divine Spirit. The Jewish 
idea is the distinct germ and the historical parent 
of that highest Christian conception. 

To the Jews, at the outset, the ideal of charac¬ 
ter was an ideal of separation from defilement of 
whatever kind. And the virtue most charac¬ 
teristic of the Jews, in every age, has been per¬ 
sonal purity. This, in an ethical sense, was their 
crowning advantage over the nations around 
them. Measured by this test, the ancient Jews 
were transcendently superior to the Greeks even 
of the time of Socrates. 

Yet, even in this, their especial moral distinc¬ 
tion, and judging them even by the ideal standard 
of their law, the Jews were far below the Chris¬ 
tian level. The law of Moses allowed the hus- 
hand to divorce the wife almost for a whim. It 
put concubinage under restrictions only. It set 
no stigma on the husband’s breach of the mar¬ 
riage vow. And, furthermore, in the earlier time 
the idea of purity confused essentials and non- 
essentials. No one can read without wonder¬ 
ment the prohibitions that are indiscriminately 
mingled, of the grossest sensual crimes, and of¬ 
fenses which we call ceremonial. (The distinc¬ 
tion between ceremonial and moral law is a later 
thought, and no such separation seems traceable 
in the original form of the laws.) The mixing of 


THE SPIRIT OF JUDAISM. 


155 


linen and woolen in one garment, and tlie plow¬ 
ing with an ox and an ass together, are prohibited 
on the same page and in the same terms with the 
worst offenses against chastity. This confusion 
marks a rudimentary stage; the sentiment of 
purity was strong, but as yet crude and unedu¬ 
cated. It grew more intelligent even at an early 
stage of the national history. 

But the idea of purity was only one element, 
though the central element, in the Jewish concep¬ 
tion of character. Along with “ holiness,” an¬ 
other great word shines out from the Old Testa¬ 
ment pages — 44 righteousness.” A very noble 
filling out of that word can be supplied from the 
historical and especially the-poetical books. The 
sense of justice, equit}^ integrity, was very strong. 
The ideal of an upright judge plays a conspicu¬ 
ous part, as in Abraham’s grand appeal: 44 Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ” 44 In- 
nocency ” — freedom from wrong-doing toward 
others — is another characteristic word. The 
crime of David against Uriah is a natural in¬ 
cident in the life of an Eastern king; what gives 
the Jewish story its eminence is the stern repro¬ 
bation of the prophet, and the profound repent¬ 
ance of David. Compassion for the poor and 
afflicted is exalted throughout the Old Testa¬ 
ment ; it is under this form, for the most part, 


156 


A LIVING FAITH. 


that we get nearest to the lofty and comprehen¬ 
sive “ charity ” of the later dispensation. Gen¬ 
erally, it is the stern and heroic virtues that are 
exhibited and extolled. Throughout the Proph¬ 
ets we find fidelity to duty, rebuke of wicked¬ 
ness in high places, courage, patriotism, as con¬ 
spicuous qualities. With these occur at inter¬ 
vals, as in Isaiah, wonderful bursts of tenderness 
and sympathy. 

The conspicuous defect in the old Jewish mo¬ 
rality was in relation to the treatment of personal 
enemies, and of wrong-doers generally. There 
are a few passages which grandly teach the Chris¬ 
tian lesson of returning good for evil. But the 
characteristic Jewish sentiment called for the 
punishment of wrong-doers, with little thought 
of their reclamation. And correspondingly, as a 
man always thinks his own enemies are sinners, 
the sentiment of revenge was very strong, and 
had even a kind of religious sanction. A ter¬ 
rible Oriental vindictivetiess often appears in the 
Psalms, and David evidently felt it a perfectly 
religious thing to curse his enemies with the bit¬ 
terest imprecations. In the Hebrew conception 
of God, mercy and forgiveness were prominent; 
but that quality failed of strong reproduction in 
their ideal of human character. 

We have thus far considered the Jewish con- 


THE SPIRIT OF JUDAISM. 


157 


ception of religion on the human side. But 
everywhere this element is closely blent with the 
sense of Divine influence. To the Jewish mind 
all the striking phenomena of nature were man¬ 
ifestations of the power and glory of the Living 
God. The national history was interpreted as 
shaped by two factors: the fidelity or disobedience 
of the people, and the interposition of Jehovah 
to reward or to punish. But Jehovah was more 
than the embodiment of natural beauty and 
grandeur, more than the sovereign of the nation: 
he was the guardian and inspirer of righteous¬ 
ness, the' intimate friend of the good man, the 
forgiver and restorer of the penitent. Nowhere 
in literature is there the expression of more 
vivid, joyful, and intimate sense of the Divine 
Presence in the human heart than in the Psalms 
of David. 

From first to last, Jewish history is marked 
by the blended ideas of spiritual worship and 
right living. That union was its glory. And 
wherever in the sacred books we find the spirit¬ 
ual element strong, there, too, the moral element 
is strong. It is these two things — which to the 
Hebrew mind, at its best, were closely blended — 
the thought of God and the thought of good¬ 
ness — it is these ideas, intensely felt and nobly 
expressed, that make the Psalms and the best 


158 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of the Prophets fruitful and precious in every 
age. 

The ceremonial element in Judaism at times 
confused the moral sense, and at times crowded 
it into the background. Nothing is more striking 
than the frequent protests by psalmist and prophet 
against its excessive predominance. “ Thou de- 
sirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou 
delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices 
of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a 
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” 
The greatest spirits of the old dispensation rose 
above the religion of forms; but the ritualistic 
tendency was strong in the Jewish nature, and in 
the time of Christ it had largely crusted over the 
moral and spiritual elements. 

The root-idea of Jewish morality was separa¬ 
tion from evil. Hence, naturally, a rigid seclu¬ 
sion from heathen peoples ; inwardly, a standard 
of character in which abstinence from wrong¬ 
doing was insisted on, rather than active well¬ 
doing ; furthermore, a sharp line of separation 
between the “good ” and the “ wicked ” in social 
life. 

The relation of Christ to the earlier Judaism 
will be the subject of another paper. 


XXL 


THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO JUDAISM. 

Viewing the life of Christ in its historical as¬ 
pect, nothing is more striking than his twofold 
relation to the earlier Judaism. In him we see 
at once a flowering out of the older religion into 
fullest beauty, and the introduction of principles 
not only new but radically different from the old. 
The person of Christ appears most exalted when 
we compare him with the highest of mankind be¬ 
sides. Paul, whose portrait stands by the side 
of the Master’s, we recognize as a “ king of men,” 
one of the very loftiest of the race; yet he fades 
before the luster that shines from the person of 
Jesus. By a like comparison we get a new sense 
of the incomparable truth which Christ first 
brought to light, when we compare it with the 
best that went before. 

We have seen that the characteristic of the 
Jewish religion was its union of devout feeling 
and right living. We have seen that there was 
a struggle within it between ritualism on the one 
side and a pure spiritual morality on the other. 


160 


A LIVING FAITH. 


And we have found, as the root-idea of its moral¬ 
ity, consecration to God expressed by separation 
from evil. 

Now, at the beginning of the teaching of Jesus, 
we find him giving to the idea of right living a 
comprehensiveness, a clearness, and a depth which 
wonderfully enlarged the old Jewish conceptions. 
In the Sermon on the Mount he gave to the moral 
principles of the old law an application so search¬ 
ing that the human conscience almost dates a 
new birth from that hour. Where the Jewish 
law had condemned coarse and obvious forms of 
evil, he threw the strong light of the moral con¬ 
sciousness on all subtle sins of the heart. In this 
he did but carry out the highest spirit of the old 
religion. We can imagine the noblest men of 
the older time, men like Moses and Isaiah, wel¬ 
coming his words with joy, as a fuller and clearer 
expression of the message given to them to de¬ 
liver. 

Christ’s treatment of the ceremonial element 
of Judaism is an example of the far-reaching wis¬ 
dom of his method. He lived in external con¬ 
formity to the ritual of his church. He not only 
did not attack its ceremonial forms, but, so far as 
appears, he complied witli them without an ex¬ 
ception. The Sabbatical restrictions which he 
broke through appear to have been but the casu- 


THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO JUDAISM. 161 

istical refinements of the Pharisees. He lived 
and died a ceremonialist; and yet, he planted 
the seed that in its growth quickly threw off the 
ceremonial law, as an upspringing shoot pushes 
aside a pebble. The emphasis he put on spiritual 
worship and moral character speedily made ritual 
worship a superfluity. Accepting for the time 
both the outward and the inward elements of the 
old religion, he gave to the inward such a su¬ 
preme impulse that ceremonialism fell away and 
perished, — to reappear whenever the Church 
grows lethargic, and to vanish always when the 
spirit of Christ again shines out. 

The sympathy between Jesus and the teachers 
of the old religion nowhere appears closer than 
in the spirit of pure worship which was in both. 
Their very language sometimes lent itself to his 
deepest experiences. In his supreme moment of 
suffering it was the Psalmist’s words that came 
to his lips: “ My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? ” 

But Christ introduced one very remarkable 
change in the idea of man’s relation to God. It 
was he who first distinctly taught that the Divine 
goodness is the model for human goodness. All 
worshipful thought of God implies this to some 
extent. The old Jewish thought of Jehovah, as 
just, pure, merciful, was a great incentive toward 
11 


162 


A LIVING FAITH. 


justice, purity, and mercy in human conduct. 
But the element of reverence and awe was so 
predominant in the older Jew’s feeling toward 
Jehovah that the thought of expressly imitating 
him — of taking this Almighty and All-perfect 
One as his own model — was foreign to his mind. 
But Jesus brings this very thought of likeness to 
God as the supreme motive to right living. In 
his teaching, the idea of God, while it loses noth¬ 
ing of august purity and that awfulness which be¬ 
longs to perfect goodness, yet gains infinitely in 
tenderness and sympathy. In the Old Testament 
the characteristic title of God is Jehovah — the 
“ I Am,” the Infinite. But in the discourses of 
Jesus the habitual name is “ Father.” The use 
of the word in this application is very rare in the 
Old Testament. Simply in teaching men to call 
God “ our Father ” Jesus may be said to have 
brought a new religion upon earth. 

Part of the meaning of that name lay in this, 
that as the child grows up in likeness to the 
father, so man is to become like his Father in 
Heaven. It is thus that Jesus uses the thought. 
“ I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
and pray for them which despitefully use you and 
persecute you: that ye may be the children of your 
Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his 


THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO JUDAISM. 163 

sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and send- 
eth rain on the just and the unjust.” So, above 
all, in that wonderful prayer, he joins the peti¬ 
tion that we may be forgiven with the reminder 
that we are to forgive our enemies in the same 
way. 

By this figure of father and child, and by the 
whole spirit of his teaching, Jesus set the Divine 
Goodness as the very ideal toward which men 
were to rise. But he did more than this. He 
taught the direct, immediate indwelling of God 
in man. He set before us, as the true relation 
between the soul and God, the perfect oneness of 
inmost love. That sublime idea — at once the 
sublimest and the tenderest that the human mind 
can reach — shines out in its full glory in the dis¬ 
course which crowns the Gospel of John. 

To the best spirits of the older Judaism there 
opened itself at times a communion with God 
which yielded a supreme sense of strength and 
joy and hope. But the whole life of Jesus is 
radiant with this communion. It is this that 
lends the wonderful and heavenly light to his 
figure. In him all nobility of character, all pro¬ 
found speech reaching the depths of our moral 
consciousness, all delicacy and depth of affection, 
all utmost self-sacrifice — appear as the outcome 
of a will perfectly submitted and united to the 


164 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Divine will. In his company we get an imme¬ 
diate sense of the Divine love and purity and 
peace, abiding in man— Immanuel, God with us. 

But, for the most radical contrast between the 
religion of Jesus and that of which it was born, 
we must consider that idea of exclusion, sepa¬ 
ration, which it has been said was fundamen¬ 
tal to Judaism. The revolution which Christ 
wrought in this may be considered first on its 
external side. The exclusiveness of the Jew was 
conspicuous in the national sentiment. To him 
the foreigner was only worthy of fellowship when 
he took upon him the obligations and insignia of 
a Jew. Here, again, Christ wrought his work 
slowly. It was left for Paul to say, “ There is 
neither Jew nor Greek,” and to give half his life 
to maintaining that principle. But it was Christ 
who planted the seed. The whole matter lay 
wrapped up in the parable of the Good Samar¬ 
itan. 

We get still deeper into the revolution which 
Christ inaugurated when we look at his treat¬ 
ment of sinners and outcasts among his own peo¬ 
ple. Here, more than anywhere else, he went 
right in the teeth of the whole sentiment and 
instinct of respectable Jews. “ He eateth with 
sinners !”—that was to Jewish respectability 
the unpardonable sin. At this point, Jesus, else- 


THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO JUDAISM. 165 

where so prudent and patient, did not for one 
moment stop for conciliation or compromise with 
Jewish prejudice. It seems as though here was 
a truth so central, so vital, that he must give it 
from first to last the strongest expression for 
which words and acts could be found. “The Son 
of man is come to seek and to save that which 
was lost.” It all lay in that. Human brother¬ 
hood, the Divine fatherhood, all that is noblest, 
sweetest, best in life, lay in that lesson of which 
the life and death of Jesus was one long unbroken 
expression. A sinner was not something to be 
hated, but something to be saved! This was 
held up as the quality which joins Divinity and 
Humanity. Forgive your enemies, as God for¬ 
gives you. Do good to the evil and the un¬ 
thankful, as your Father sends rain and sunshine 
on the wicked no less than on the righteous. 
Love your very murderers ; pray for them ; for¬ 
give them, and look to your Father to forgive 
them. 

Here is where the religion of Jesus takes its 
essential departure from the earlier Judaism, and 
from every lower form of religion or morality. 
To the Jew, religion meant consecration to God 
expressed by withholding one’s self from sin and 
from sinful men. To the follower of Christ it 
means union with God in love which goes out to 


166 


A LIVING FAITH. 


save all men from evil. The lower religion ends 
in self, or, at best, in one’s own church or nation. 
In Christ’s religion, self-saving comes by self- 
sacrifice ; personal purity is but the beginning; 
love of the Highest is the inspiration, love of the 
lowest the fruit. 

So far from any possibility that Christ’s relig¬ 
ion is about to be superseded, we must believe 
that its career is hardly begun. It will freely as¬ 
similate with all new discoveries of truth. Its 
traditional form may change, as it has many 
times changed before. But the spirit of Jesus 
Christ — the religion of Divine Love dwelling in 
men, inspiring them toward perfect manhood, 
and gathering all into a family of which God is 
the Father and Christ the Elder Brother — that 
religion is immortal. 


XXII. 


THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 

Is the guidance of the Divine Spirit confined to 
those who have the knowledge of Christianity ? 
There is a difficulty in harmonizing such a view 
with the belief in God’s universal Providence. If 
every human being is created by God, is nour¬ 
ished by His air and sunshine and fruits of the 
earth, has in a word his whole physical existence 
under the direct administration and superintend¬ 
ence of the Deity, — is it altogether easy to sup¬ 
pose that the spiritual nature of any should have 
no provision made for it in the Divine economy ? 

We certainly see in every member of the hu¬ 
man race something that looks like a glimmering 
at least of heavenly light. There is no man so 
degraded that he has not some dim sense of right 
and wrong. There never was a race of men that 
did not acknowledge some kind of moral code, 
and practice some kind of worship. More than 
this, among the superior heathen races, the pa¬ 
gan Greeks and Romans, the Hindoos and the 
Chinese, there has been wide attainment of cer- 


168 


A LIVING FAITH. 


tain virtues, — patriotism, truthfulness, justice; 
in some cases even purity and benevolence. Are 
not all these things evidence that God has not 
only revealed something of himself to these men, 
but has helped them to actually rise toward him¬ 
self ? Are they not, in short, tokens of the pres¬ 
ence of the Divine Spirit ? 

At this point we naturally turn to the declara¬ 
tions on this subject of that Divine Revelation 
which we possess. It is from Paul, the most 
earnest preacher of Christianity, that we get the 
strongest testimony that those outside of Chris¬ 
tianity are in twilight rather than total darkness. 
God, he says, “ left not himself without witness,” 
among all nations, “ in that he did good, and gave 
us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling 
our hearts with food and gladness.” This lesson 
then of the Divine goodness never was wanting. 
But was the lesson ever effectual? Hear Paul 
again : “ When the Gentiles, which have not the 
law, do by nature the things contained in the 
law, these, having not the law, are a law unto 
themselves; which show the work of the law 
written in their hearts, their conscience also bear¬ 
ing witness, and their thoughts the mean while 
accusing or else excusing one another.” How 
could it be more clearly said that the sense of 
right and wrong in the human heart is the voice 


THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 


169 


of God, and that obedience to it is accepted as 
obedience to him? 

Fortified by such authority, we may fearlessly 
assert that the Divine Spirit is as wide in its 
workings as the Divine Providence. We may 
say that wherever any man—be he Christian, 
Mohammedan, or heathen — is moved to do right 
rather than wrong, to tell the truth rather than 
to lie, to sacrifice his own happiness to another’s 
— that man is moved by the Spirit of God. We 
may believe with Peter that “ in every nation, 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness 
is accepted with him.” There have been some 
who knew not the name of Jehovah or of Christ, 
who have possessed the Divine temper, and who 
have been the servants of God, and with whom 
it would be an honor for any of us to be reckoned 
as fellow-servants. When we look at Socrates, 
renouncing all other pleasures and gains for the 
pursuit of truth; hearing a Divine voice that 
guided him at each critical moment; accepting 
death rather than to renounce his course; meet¬ 
ing it in the firm faith that “ no evil can happen 
to a good man, either in life or after death; ” 
soothing his friends with words of calmness and 
hope that shame our dread of death; — looking 
at this man, we may feel that few of Christ’s 
professed followers have been truer to their 


170 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Master’s spirit, few can have been dearer to their 
Lord, than this one, who without seeing believed. 
Or again, when we see the Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius, at the dizziest height of human power, 
seeking truth and purity with the humility and 
devotedness of a saint, we must believe that to 
God’s eyes he was a saint indeed. 

Such men are rare among heathen, — and we 
may add, rare among Christians as well. But it 
is a fact to rejoice in, that the moral degradation 
of the heathen world has always been lighted by 
some gleam, fainter or stronger, of better things. 
History records, along with the vices of Greece 
and Rome, some great and wide-spread virtues. 
The records of explorers among barbarous and 
degraded tribes, together with their revelations 
of moral degradation, tell of qualities of fidelity 
and kindness even among those lowest of the 
race. The negro women who tenderly cared 
for Mungo Park as he lay a stranger at the point 
of death, have had their like among the women 
of every people under the sun. 

The Bible contains no more impressive repre¬ 
sentation of God’s attitude toward human char¬ 
acter than Christ’s picture of the Last Judg¬ 
ment, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. 
“ Before him shall be gathered all nations.” The 
nations , in the Jewish idea, were the world 


THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 


1T1 


at large, distinguished from the favored nation. 
And what, according to this teaching of our 
Lord, is to be the test of that great day? “I 
was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was 
a stranger and ye took me in; I was sick, and ye 
visited me; . . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me!” Were not the negro 
women who nursed Mungo Park, sick and a 
stranger, earning the sentence, u Come, ve blessed 
of my Father?” 

The Christian religion, on the one hand, sets 
up the very highest standard of character for our 
attainment. It calls for the most arduous service, 
the most complete self-surrender. Its exhorta¬ 
tion is: “ Be ye perfect, even as your Father in 
Heaven is perfect.” And it makes provision for 
surpassing and wonderful attainment, in so re¬ 
vealing God to men, so offering to them the 
closest union with the Divine nature, that it 
opens possibilities before undreamt of. But, on 
the other hand, it measures our responsibility by 
our opportunities. It makes a broad distinction 
between the transgressor who knew his Lord’s 
will, and him who knew it not, or knew it im¬ 
perfectly. It teaches that while only the highest 
form of good should satisfy us, God will always 
take the best we have to give. The Christian is 


172 


A LIVING FAITH. 


expected to be like Christ; but the imperfect 
virtue of him who, not having the Gospel, does 
his best, is accepted of God. 

We ought to understand and act upon this 
double truth. On the one hand, we cannot set 
our own standard too high; we cannot be too 
eager in carrying to all the world the light which 
we have. At the same time, we are to rejoice in 
the thought that God’s goodness is not limited to 
the seed of Abraham, nor to them that bear the 
name of Christian. We are to acknowledge with 
gladness the fruits of the Spirit wherever they 
appear. With whatever is excellent in character, 
Christianity claims closest kinship. There is no 
good deed done anywhere under the sun that is 
not an honor to the God we worship. There is 
no man who has conquered temptation, who has 
loved duty more than pleasure, who has groped 
upward to reach the hand of God, but has done 
it by the impulse of God’s Spirit. And in the 
great day of award, when some who have proph¬ 
esied in the name of the Lord, and in his name 
done many wonderful works, shall be judged un¬ 
faithful, and be cast into outer darkness, then 
shall there come from the East and the West 
and the North and the South those who have 
been true to their Lord, now welcomed into his 
presence. Then shall be fulfilled that sublime 


THE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 


1T3 


vision which has cheered many a good man’s 
heart when earth faded around him; the antici¬ 
pation that moved Socrates to welcome death; 
the gathering into one glorious company of the 
heroes and saints of all ages. In that assembly 
many who were strangers or foes shall know each 
other with joy; and all shall know the Lord, even 
as they are known of him. 


XXIII. 


THE UPBUILDING OF FAITH. 

Is there any danger to Christian faith from the 
influence of modern scientific thought ? Or, to 
put the question differently, Are we in danger of 
losing any part of the whole truth under the in¬ 
fluence of physical science ? 

The most brilliant development of the human 
mind in our time has been in the direction of 
material science. There has been a wide-spread 
and wonderful activity in this field, crowned with 
astonishing success, and daily making new con¬ 
quests. The laboriousness, the genius, the devo¬ 
tion that have been shown by this class of stu¬ 
dents are altogether admirable. He must be 
blind and faithless who does not rejoice and thank 
God at the sight of what is being accomplished 
by them. 

Along with this advantage goes a real danger. 
It is equally foolish to ignore it and to be panic- 
struck at it. The danger, in our apprehension, 
lies here : in the excessive concentration of men’s 
minds on a partial aspect of the truth ; in such 


THE UPBUILDING OE FAITH. 


175 


an absorption in one class of facts that other 
facts, of transcendent importance, will be ignored 
and gradually lost sight of. 

Physical science takes cognizance only of in¬ 
formation which comes through the senses. Give 
it anything that can be seen, felt, weighed, meas¬ 
ured, and it will render an account of it. The 
great laboratory of physical science has the senses 
as its doors; they stand open night and day; 
everything that can get through them passes 
unchallenged and finds welcome. But to any 
truth, or semblance of truth, that cannot use the 
senses as its medium, material science must needs 
say, “ I know you not.” 

Now, if the whole training and habit of the 
mind are given by physical science, the tendency 
is to ignore or positively deny all truth which 
does not ultimately rest on a basis of sense-per¬ 
ception. Where a community gets its whole in¬ 
struction and inspiration from devotees of phys¬ 
ical science, the great realm of spiritual truth, of 
facts transcending the grasp or suggestion of sense, 
is likely to fade out of sight. 

Physical science traces with admirable skill 
the effects of the body on the mental disposition. 
She detects the working of foul gases and bad 
food on the system ; the clouding of the brain, 
the unsettling of the nerves, the excitation of the 


176 


A LIVING FAITH. 


passions, through physical maltreatment. She 
discovers all the subtle ways by which to build 
up a healthy body, the proper home of a healthy 
soul. But there she stops. The mysterious 
power of choice by which the soul dominates the 
body, by which sometimes the invalid becomes a 
saint and the healthy man a tyrannous brute — 
of these, material science can give no account. 
She can perfect the instrument — the body ; but 
she has no talismanic word to rouse the master 
of the instrument to use it nobly. To the soul 
in its moments of moral choice, in the great crises 
that give it direction for its whole after-course, 
science is dumb. 

Science walks with men in pleasant and light¬ 
giving companionship up to the grave — and there 
stops short. Stops, at the very point toward 
which, all through life, we look with the intensest 
longing for knowledge. Here, she can neither 
affirm nor deny. She has no material from which 
to shape any answer. One thing only she sees: 
the dust returns to the earth as it was. But 
when we cry, “ Does the spirit return unto God 
who gave it ? ” she is silent. 

Have we a Divine Father? Is all our life 
guided by the hand of supreme wisdom and su¬ 
preme love ? Science can only say, u I do not 
know.” Her bidding is, to do the best we can 


THE UPBUILDING OF FAITH. 177 

for ourselves; of any one above ourselves who 
cares for us, she has no certain message. 

On these supreme topics, man gets no assur¬ 
ance from the new revelation of modern science. 
If from any other source he can be certified of a 
moral law within him, of a God, of immortality, 
he may get much and helpful side-light on these 
things from the intimations of physical science. 
But the fundamental spiritual facts he must get 
somewhere else, or not at all. And we see this 
widely going on : men whose whole education 
and thought and mental habit are in the field of 
physical science, gradually let go of the belief in 
God and immortality, not as disproved, but as 
wholly unproved, by the one study that they fol¬ 
low. 

What now is the proper corrective for this ten¬ 
dency in the community, on the part of those who 
hold to these spiritual facts as certain and of 
transcendent importance ? The remedy lies not, 
for the most part, in controversy. For this unbe¬ 
lief does not rest on demonstrations that can be 
met and overthrown. It does not present a line 
of battle that can be charged and broken and 
routed by logical assault. Rather, it fills the 
minds of men with conceptions and habits of 
thought which need to be offset and supplemented 
by other conceptions and other habits. 

12 


178 


A LIVING FAITH. 


What we need is teachers who are intensely 
possessed with spiritual truth, and will declare it 
out of the fullness of their own conviction. Phys¬ 
ical science presents a side of things which is 
real, which is important, and the view of which 
is only hurtful when it is taken as the whole in¬ 
stead of a part. We want for teachers men also 
who see the other side of things, the spiritual side, 
with such clearness that they can make other men 
see it. We want men so full of the sense of God, 
so uplifted by the prophetic sight of the future 
life, so conscious of the joy of well-doing, so radi¬ 
ant with the very spirit of love, that the fire shall 
strike from them into all who are about them. 
We want men whose whole lives are in the at¬ 
mosphere of duty, of self-sacrifice, of aspiration 
God ward, of faith in Christ, of joyful looking for 
the kingdom of God, of patient toiling for its 
coming, of the heavenly hope. When such men 
speak out of the fullness of their own hearts, they 
who hear will believe. 

Beyond question, no teacher of men has had 
such power as Jesus of Nazareth. And how did 
he teach? He hardly attempted to prove, he 
simply asserted. Read his words: of argumenta¬ 
tion there is almost none ; he made no inductions, 
he scarcely employed logic — he simply made 
assertions. Yet He was believed—believed as 


THE UPBUILDING OF FAITH. 


179 


no other man ever was, believed not only by Gal¬ 
ilean peasants, but by the loftiest souls of the 
ages since. Why was it ? Partly, the truth he 
spoke was self-witnessing; it was of that highest 
order that is accepted as soon as uttered. The 
Golden Rule needs no proof. The blessings on 
the pure, the peacemakers, those who hunger and 
thirst for righteousness; the parable of the Good 
Samaritan ; the whole gospel of love; these need 
no proof, they are their own credentials. And 
farther, all the teachings of Jesus have com¬ 
manded belief simply because they were his teach¬ 
ings ; because they were uttered by the truest, 
noblest, greatest soul men ever knew. In spirit¬ 
ual things we instinctively believe those whom we 
most highly love and reverence. We trust, and 
rightly trust, the moral judgments of the good; 
for teaching in the highest things of life we look 
to those whose own lives have been on the high¬ 
est plane. Jesus Christ, by virtue of his own 
goodness, no less than by the very nature of the 
things he taught, commands belief as no other 
teacher has ever done. 

The same elements must give power to all moral 
and spiritual teaching. The truth must be so ap¬ 
prehended in its beauty and greatness that at its 
very statement men will gladly believe. If our 
thought of God in any measure apprehends the 


180 


A LIVING FAITH. 


glory of his being — if we do at all rightly con¬ 
ceive the majesty of love, the unutterable sweet¬ 
ness, the far-reaching ways of wisdom and justice 
and tenderness, that are in our Heavenly Father 
— at the very utterance of our thought men will 
believe in him. And again, our own apprehen¬ 
sion of spiritual truth must be reached through 
our lives ; we must go down into the deep expe¬ 
riences ; we must live our way into truth through 
purity, through steadfastness, through holiness, 
through love. Spiritual truth requires of the stu¬ 
dent a harder discipline than science exacts of 
her followers. He who has yielded himself to 
that discipline, he who in his own life has reached 
and grasped the great spiritual realities in their 
certainty and their magnificence — he can give 
the teaching without which the interpretation of 
the material world leaves men hungry, orphaned, 
perishing. 


XXIV. 


THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST. 

In our time, ideas of morality have a strong hold 
on men’s minds, while spiritual faith is compara¬ 
tively weak. The world at large is more sensi¬ 
tive perhaps than ever before to the power of 
moral ideals. The great principle of universal 
love to man never stood so strong as to-day. It 
pervades creeds and philosophies the most diverse 
from one another. There is a strong philan¬ 
thropise element in the systems of men as far 
from Christianity as Comte and Mill. There 
never were so many agencies of active benevo¬ 
lence, both within and without the Church, as 
now. So, again, the great virtue of devotion to 
truth finds at this time the widest and most 
eminent exemplification. Here, at any rate, the 
moralist may heartily thank material science, 
whose constant word to her votaries is that every 
prejudice and prepossession must yield to the 
evidence of fact. Such a discipline develops a 
prime element of character. So, again, the wide 
revolt against creeds is largely an evidence of an 


182 


A LIVING FAITH. 


earnest desire for truth, that will not accept any 
comfortable substitute. We might go on to illus¬ 
trate in many ways, how, with all its faults, this 
age strongly apprehends and seeks some of the 
noblest elements of human character. 

On the other hand, men are weak in their ap¬ 
prehension of what lies above and beyond the 
present life. They perpetually ask in their 
hearts, Is there a God ? Is there a life beyond 
the grave ? And often the heavens appear empty 
to them, and the grave is as the end of all things. 
They cannot rest in these negations. There is 
an inextinguishable and divine hunger, which 
craves the consciousness of a higher Love and 
Wisdom enfolding man, and a fulfillment here¬ 
after of the broken promises of this life. In the 
words of Paul, men are “feeling after God, if 
haply they may find him,” — and but few have 
realized the Apostle’s assurance, “ He is not far 
from every one of us.” 

A philosopher might perhaps trace the histor¬ 
ical causes of this partial paralysis of faith. He 
might find it largely in the sudden breaking 
down of the external authorities on which men 
had come to lazily lean for the certification of 
their religious beliefs. The Church, the Creeds, 
the Bible itself, can no longer satisfy the inquir¬ 
ing mind by the simple ipse dixit of their author- 


THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST. 


183 


ity. And this revolt of reason is full of promise 
for the ultimate future ; it is a sign that men will 
not; take God at second-hand; that they yearn 
toward that immediate soul-assurance, that direct 
consciousness of the Divine presence, which is the 
rightful possession of the sons of God. But there 
is a certain interim, when the authority of others 
has ceased to satisfy, and the soul has not fully 
developed its own highest faculties; when the 
crutches have been taken away from the conva¬ 
lescent and he is not yet sure of his own feet; and 
this is the period of disquiet, and at times almost 
of despair. 

Another cause of the weakening of faith in our 
time might be found in the absorbing claims of 
material science; science which has great truth 
of its own to impart, even upon the spiritual side 
of things; but which, when exclusively followed, 
dulls by disuse some of the noblest faculties of 
the mind. The soul of man was designed to fly 
as well as to walk, but some of our modern 
teachers would never let it leave the ground. 
They are sweeping in their contempt for “things 
unproven,” for all that does not present creden¬ 
tials to the senses. But the visions of Plato are 
after two thousand years a reality and a mighty 
power among men; and the dream of Bunyan 
moves human hearts in a way that the wonders 


184 


A LIVING FAITH.. 


of the spectroscope cannot rival. It is still true 
that man cannot live by bread alone. 

But we shall not attempt to fully analyze the 
causes of the eclipse of faith. We are concerned 
rather with the fact itself, and with another fact 
which touches it. Men, we have said, even in 
their doubts as to God and a future life, are at 
this time highly sensitive to ideals of moral ex¬ 
cellence. They respond to sentiments and still 
more to examples of truthfulness, of courage, of 
self-sacrifice. A great soul has power over them. 
And truth that comes through a moral medium 
— ideas generated in an atmosphere of love and 
heroism and magnanimity—come home strongly 
to men. In other words, whatever our disbeliefs, 
most of us profoundly believe in goodness; and 
we incline to believe that a man who has practi¬ 
cally learned the secret of noble living has some¬ 
how got near to the truth of things. For we feel 
that the highest test of truth after all is its work¬ 
ing in life, and the beliefs that bear the fairest 
fruits in character are likely to have the deepest 
roots in truth. 

History brings out this fact: the man who 
stands incomparably above all whom we know in 
the perfection of his character was possessed 
above all others with absolute, unwavering cer- 
tanity of a Divine Father who cares for men, and 
of a life of which earth sees only the beginning. 


THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST. 185 

To the coolest and most unpartisan critic, 
the life of Jesus exhibits a loftiness of moral 
attainment, a many-sided perfectness of charac¬ 
ter, which constantly excites new wonder. His 
words and acts touch the deepest springs of 
moral life. It is impossible to sum up in any 
word, or in any single view, the various aspects 
of nobility and moral loveliness which appear in 
him. If this seems to any one the language of 
exaggeration, let him thoughtfully study the rec¬ 
ords of the four Gospels; dismissing for the time 
all theological doctrines, all theories about the 
superhuman nature of Jesus; looking only as in 
any other biography at the traits of personal 
character. Such a study may go on for years, 
bringing constantly to light some new and ex¬ 
quisite feature in the portrait. We feel in the 
character of Jesus something that is unfathom¬ 
able. When we seem to have reached the full 
meaning of some characteristic incident, it sud¬ 
denly opens new depths to our gaze. Or, if we 
examine the teachings of Jesus on the subject of 
character, — the theory, so to speak, which, in 
an unsystematic way, he set forth as to the true 
method of moral development, — we feel that he 
possessed the inmost secrets of the science of 
right living. He strikes far deeper than any 
teacher that had gone before or that came after 


186 


A LIVING FAITH. 


him. The best conceptions of heathen philoso¬ 
phy, the highest schemes of self-culture that 
modern thinkers have propounded, are meager 
and lifeless compared to the simple words in 
which Jesus touched the springs of conduct. 
Whatever trust we instinctively give to living 
goodness, to practical mastery of the secret of 
right living — that trust we cannot help giving 
to the Christ of the Gospels. 

Now, if ever man fully believed in God and 
immortality, Christ so believed. That faith was 
the very ground and atmosphere of his life; it 
underla } 7 and pervaded everything he did. “ My 
Father” was with him the ever-present fact. 
His whole moral teaching has as its keynote the 
soul’s immediate dependence on God. The aim 
of his whole career, and of every part of it, was 
to bring men to vital consciousness of a heavenly 
presence with them. He taught morality, but 
the beginning of morality was to be “poor in 
spirit,” to seek supply from the Divine fullness. 
He relieved physical suffering, but he never 
ended there; always the relief was connected 
with faith— with a conscious taking hold on the 
Divine mercy. He presented himself as the 
bread of life, the water of life, the light, the 
way, the truth, the life itself, inasmuch as he 
was the visible expression and symbol of the 


THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST. 187 

Father’s nature. The nearer he drew to the end, 
the more clearly he declared this highest signifi¬ 
cance of his life ; that in him the Father was re¬ 
vealed ; and that evermore men might come into 
closest and unending fellowship with that God 
whom he had disclosed to them. 

In the Christ of the New Testament, moral 
and spiritual truth perfectly blend. In that com¬ 
bination there is special attraction for the dispo¬ 
sition of which we have spoken, which firmly 
holds to the idea of goodness, but grasps with 
difficulty the idea of God. In this record we 
come into companionship with one who satisfies 
and stimulates the highest moral feeling in us, 
while from him there radiates that serene cer¬ 
tainty of God and immortality which our hearts 
crave. And it is the men who have drunk of 
this inspiration, and who in their own lives re¬ 
produce the life of Christ, that will have power 
to lead others into the light. 


XXV. 


THE SEVERITY OF CHRIST. 

We are accustomed to think of Christ as em¬ 
bodied Love, and to associate with his name 
everything that is tender, winning, and sweet. 
To say that Christ discloses to us the fatherhood 
of God is not enough; we recognize in him the 
motherhood of God. And yet, if we open the 
New Testament, and read the history of our 
Lord’s life, almost every chapter reveals to us an 
aspect of severity. There are sentences that 
smite like a sword. There are words that bum 
like fire. They occur not once, or twice, but 
constantly. They are as much a part of the 
Christ of the New Testament as the tenderest 
love-words that John has recorded. 

“ Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo¬ 
crites ! ” “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe 
unto thee, Bethsaida! It shall be more tolerable 
for Tyre and Sidon, it shall be more tolerable 
for the land of Sodom, in the day of judgment, 
than for you ! ” “ Think not that I am come to 

send peace on earth; I come not to send peace, 


THE SEVERITY OF CHRIST. 


189 


but a sword.” To bis disciple Peter he ex¬ 
claims, “ Get thee behind me, Satan ! ” And 
these tremendous utterances are pronounced, not 
shrinkingly, unwillingly, as by one on whom con¬ 
science lays an unwelcome burden of utterance. 
They come from the heart; they have life-blood 
in them ; the “ Get thee behind me, Satan ! ” is 
as genuine in feeling as that other word, “ Si¬ 
mon, lovest thou me ? ” 

What shall we say to these things? What 
place has this burning severity in the character 
of our merciful Saviour ? What place has wrath 
in a gospel of Love ? Nay, since for us there can 
be no higher attainment than to be Christ-like, 
how are we, like him, to be angry yet sin not ? 

Christ is the manifestation of the Divine Nat¬ 
ure. That Nature, in its inmost essence, in its 
infinite height and depth, is love. But Christ 
comes to us as Love saving men out of the evil 
that is in the world. There lies the background 
to the glorious picture — the evil in the world. 
And while love is in conflict, it must be fire to 
burn as well as fire to warm ; it must be light¬ 
ning to reveal the abysses amid which we stand, 
as well as sunlight to smile upon us. 

That great, awful fact, the existence of evil, 
will not be ignored. The fact stands unchanged 
by our philosophizing, as the mountains are un- 


190 


A LIVING FAITH. 


changed by the geologists’ theories about their 
structure. We harden ourselves to deny the 
fact; to affirm that what seems evil is but an¬ 
other form of good; and when we sin a voice 
from the depth of our being pierces our sophis¬ 
tries, and, as with the voice of God, declares that 
sin is evil. Or, again, we strain our ’wistful gaze 
toward the farthest future, and would fain be¬ 
lieve that at the end of all this there shall issue 
perfect good to all the universe. But what if it 
be so ? The very wish in its intensity betokens 
more impressively than anything else our sense 
that at present all is not well; that we are en¬ 
compassed by evil, and in a Divine deliverance is 
our only hope. “ I pray not that thou shouldest 
take them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil.” That is the 
dying prayer of our Lord. All his life sets forth, 
in every act and word, that twofold fact — evil 
engulfing men, and Divine love working to de¬ 
liver them. 

That deliverance is by conflict. The foes that 
assail men are mighty, only less mighty than 
God himself. u We wrestle not against flesh and 
blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of darkness of this world, 
against spiritual wickedness in high places.” 
There is no man who has really lived who has 


THE SEVERITY OF CHRIST. 


191 


not in his own experience a full commentary on 
that declaration of the Apostle’s. The foes that 
assail us, how terrible they are! Our lusts, our 
pride, our indolence, our covetousness, our re¬ 
venge, how strong and crafty they are ! With 
tears and prayers, with looking unto God and 
putting forth our best strength, we do but wage 
a mingled warfare of victories and defeats. And 
each man’s heart is in this the mirror of the 
whole human race. 

It is to us men, to us, borne down and beaten 
by evil that is too mighty for us, that the Son of 
God comes, and takes our hand, and says: “ Be 
of good cheer ! ” And at his Divine touch, the 
heavens open to our blinded eyes, and we see 
Love sitting enthroned, and know that God is 
our Father, and heaven our proper home. And 
then we are left — not alone, for the Son of God 
is with us — not alone, for God’s very being en¬ 
folds us — yet left to make our way against 
temptations, against a world of fleshly allure¬ 
ment, against a lower self that is our worst devil, 
upward, till we gain our higher selves, till we 
stand by Christ’s side, till we see our Father’s 
face and are like him. 

That is the road on which our Lord Jesus 
Christ led the way for us. And when the way 
was barred for the feeble feet of any little child, 


192 


A LIVING FAITH. 


he smote the opposer as with the arm of God. 
“ Whoso shall offend one of these little ones, 
it were better for him that a mill-stone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
in the depths of the sea!” “Woe unto you, 
Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye shut 
up the kingdom of heaven against men: for 
ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye 
them that are entering to go in.” And to the 
hindrances within men — to the pleasant indul¬ 
gences of sin, to the easy-going neglect of duty 
— he brings the same word of burning severity. 
“ If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast 
it from thee! If thy hand or thy foot offend 
thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee! it is 
better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed 
rather than having two hands or two feet to be 
cast into everlasting fire.” The servant who hid 
his talent in a napkin does not strike our imag¬ 
ination as a very bad man; it is only indolence 
that draws on him the sentence: “ Cast him into 
outer darkness.” Nay, things good and sweet in 
themselves, the love of father and mother, of wife 
and children, must be utterly subordinated when 
they would make us deaf to the higher voice. 
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, 
and mother, and wife, and children, and breth¬ 
ren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple.” 


THE SEVERITY OF CHRIST. 


193 


Take any one of these intense rhetorical figures 
as language of literal fact and it becomes absurd; 
but the great underlying truth in each can find 
no words that shall give to it expression weighty 
enough. They all say : “ Live the true life, the 
life of purity, of aspiration, of love, the Christ- 
life ; and let everything perish that would hinder 
that.” 

The highest human image of tenderness is a 
mother with her babe. Approach the babe to 
hurt it, and see what fire will flash from her! 
Our highest conception of the bliss of love is the 
bridegroom and the bride. Offer injury or in¬ 
sult to her, and all the manhood in him will flame 
out against you! 

The soul that hungers and thirsts for righteous¬ 
ness— the heart that, having fed on the husks 
of sin, has tasted the Father’s forgiveness — the 
man who has within him a vision of Christ, an 
ideal of glorious manhood in which self is lost 
and love is all, unto which he may attain— that 
man should have in himself the spirit that was 
in Christ, to consume, as with a flame, the things 
that are base. That is “the wrath of the Lamb.” 
To have that temper is to be “ baptized with the 
Holy Ghost and with fire.” 

13 


XXVI. 


A GREAT HERESY. 

Heresy has in these latter days become almost 
a byword. Men speak of it with a smile instead 
of a shudder. In truth, if by heresy is meant 
want of conformity to the philosophy of the 
fourth century, the word may well become a 
laughing-stock when men try to make it a term 
of reproach. It is like reproving a man for hav¬ 
ing outgrown his baby-clothes. 

But, in the broad sense of dangerous departure 
from the truth, heresy is a serious matter. The 
name may fall into contempt, but the thing is 
very real and very bad. For, if truth is life-giv¬ 
ing, if it is to the soul what light is to the body, 
then to miss the truth and accept falsehood in its 
stead is one of the worst things that can befall a 
man. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, 
how great is that darkness! ” And when this 
ignorance, instead of being self-confessed, plumes 
itself as true knowledge, and sets itself up as a 
religious faith, and seeks to draw men into it, it 
becomes indeed an engine of destruction. This 


A GREAT HERESY. 195 

is real heresy — error which saps the foundation 
of religious truth, in the name of religion. 

There is one such form of error, so fatal, so 
persistent, and so wide-spread, that it may fairly 
be called the great heresy. Its essence is this: 
men regard religion as in some way a substitute 
for right living, instead of the highest form of 
right living. They seek a shorter and easier way 
to God’s favor than by obeying his law. They 
reject the word spoken of old: “ What doth the 
Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ” — 
and put ceremonial, or sacrifice, or some other 
substitute, in place of justice, mercy, humility, 
and the whole sweep of right feeling and right 
action which constitutes character. So doing, 
they utterly pervert religion. They make of it 
an excuse, instead of an obedience. It becomes 
a shield to their wrong-doing, instead of an es¬ 
cape out of wrong-doing. 

True religion implies man’s recognition of the 
moral universe in which he is a part. It is the 
disclosure to him of the spiritual and eternal 
realm which enspheres his narrow and visible 
present. It shows him the transcendent conse¬ 
quences which attach to his action. He sees 
himself no longer a helpless and uncared-for 
atom, but the child of the Almighty and the heir 


196 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of immortality. He hears the voice that called 
him into being calling him at every moment to 
choose the right and spurn the wrong, and he 
feels in himself the power to obey or disobey the 
call. He recognizes a law by which his wrong¬ 
doing works consequences of evil that he cannot 
measure, while every right action is the seed of 
far-off harvests. True religion, in a word, brings 
transcendent motives, and appeals to the noblest 
capacities and highest energies of human nature, 
all centering in this: that men are set upon the 
most earnest effort toward goodness. 

But the historical record of religion is largely 
the story of men’s attempts to escape from this 
hard practical application. The great religious 
delusion of mankind has been the idea that the 
Deity was to be approached and placated in some 
other way than by the homage of the heart to 
perfect goodness and the effort of the life to 
reach it. So the ancient heathen sought to ap¬ 
pease their gods by hecatombs of oxen or of slain 
enemies, just as they would have bribed an 
earthly monarch by similar gifts. So the Jews 
in the time of Christ, instead of making their 
ritual the mere symbol of spiritual worship, made 
it in itself the essential thing. So the early 
Christian Church, relapsing toward darkness with 
a rapidity which presents the saddest spectacle 


A GREAT HERESY. 


197 


in human history, found in sacrament and ritual 
the way to salvation. And so our Protestant 
churches have often presented systems of doc¬ 
trine which, while they do not absolve men from 
the obligation of right living, yet put the essen¬ 
tial condition of acceptance and salvation not in 
what a man is, but in what he believes or feels, 
in some operation of the mind or some emotion 
that is outside of and apart from the conduct of 
his daily life. 

Thus we have known a preacher to speak in 
this way: he set forth, from one of the noble 
Old Testament passages, the blessedness of the 
righteous and the misery of the wicked; and 
this was in substance his application : “ Some of 
you feel yourselves wanting in this righteousness, 
and you are uneasy about it. But a righteous¬ 
ness has been provided for you which is perfect, 
and which you can have this moment if you will. 
It is all ready, you have only to accept it. It is 
like a title-deed to vast possessions, signed and 
sealed, and you have only to hold out your hand 
and take it. Christ has provided a righteousness 
as a substitute for yours ; will you accept it? ” 

Now mark, that this conclusion was a direct 
reversal and overthrow of the text, and of the 
whole teaching of both Old and New Testa¬ 
ments. If these books carry one thing on their 


198 


A LIVING FAITH. 


very face and in tlieir deepest heart, it is the 
blessedness of being righteous. The preacher’s 
lesson was, Christ has spared you the necessity 
of being righteous. The message of the Script¬ 
ures from first to last is: “ What doth the Lord 
require of thee but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ” 
“ Be ye holy, for I am holy.” “ Fight the 
good fight of faith.” “ So walk even as Christ 
walked.” “ Be sober, be vigilant.” “ Endure 
unto the end.” The preacher’s comfortable doc¬ 
trine was: “You need have no trouble; full 
righteousness and sure salvation are yours this 
moment if you will accept them ! ” 

All representations of Christ’s work which 
make it supersede in any way the necessity for 
good works in men are radically false and dan¬ 
gerous. There is no trace of such an idea in the 
New Testament. It is safe to say that sucli a 
conception never entered the minds of the New 
Testament writers. The thought that fills them 
is Christ lifting men into goodness; not Christ 
saving men from the necessity of goodness. In 
him is disclosed the Divine forgiveness, but al¬ 
ways with the added message: Go, and sin no 
more. He did not come bringing a signed and 
sealed pardon or title-deed. His work was to 
plant the kingdom of God within men; to kindle 


A GREAT HERESY. 


199 


in them his own spirit; to touch them with a 
longing for goodness, a divine love for men, a 
consciousness of their Father God, that should 
make them blossom and bear fruit in all sweetness 
and glory of life. It was the thought of likeness 
to him, of participation in his spirit and actual 
personal communion with him, that inspired his 
followers when he had left them. They dwell on 
this with endless richness of expression: “ That 
Christ may dwell in your hearts ; ” “ Christ in 
you the hope of glory ; ” “ Dying with Christ 
unto sin; ” “If ye be risen with Christ, seek 
those things which are above ; ” “For me to 
live is Christ; ” “ Whether we live or die we are 
the Lord’s ; ” “ Your life is hid with Christ; ” 
“ Christ who is our life.” The whole New Tes¬ 
tament may almost be said to be a sublime ex¬ 
pansion of this idea : the growth of the soul into 
likeness, and at last into absolute oneness with 
Christ. Compared with this, how unspeakably 
poor and degrading is the view that we come into 
the benefit of his life and death by some mechan¬ 
ical transfer outside of our own character ! 

Again, men so conceive of the heavenly life 
that it makes them sluggards in this life. The 
idea is very common, that if one does but become 
a Christian here, however poor a one, at the gate 
of death he will pass instantly into full perfection 


200 


A LIVING FAITH. 


and perfect happiness. The latent feeling that 
goes with this is very strong: If I am right on 
the whole, my future destiny will not be affected 
by the details of my conduct or the degree of my 
attainment. An immeasurable amount of spirit¬ 
ual indolence and failure are due to this fancy — 
for it is only a fancy — that the details of con¬ 
duct will have no perceptible influence on the life 
of the next world. In truth, every choice be¬ 
tween right and wrong leaves its mark on the 
soul; and the soul takes that disposition and 
character which is the result of its whole course 
of action into the next world with it. So much 
is certain. What renovation, what sudden ac¬ 
cession in its rate of progress, may come with the 
opening of the new life, we do not know. But 
we have every reason to believe that the moral 
equipment with which a man leaves this world 
will determine his beginning in the next. And 
the proper use of the belief in a future life is as 
a constant motive to right conduct in this. 

Our actions do not perish in the doing, or when 
we die. They take hold on eternity. It is with 
this thought that the Apostle ends his grand 
statement to the Corinthians of the Christian ex¬ 
pectation of immortality: “ Therefore, my beloved 
brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch 


A GREAT HERESY. 


201 


as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the 
Lord.” Every attainment here is a step in a 
ladder whose summit is in the heavens. 

All Christian truth, rightly apprehended, is a 
supreme motive to right living — to honesty, 
purity, truth, love, and whatsoever in character 
is morally lovely. Any conception which lessens 
the importance of right living, by offering some¬ 
thing else as a substitute, or by underrating the 
effect of character upon destiny, is heresy against 
Divine truth. 


XXVII. 


A PRESENT GOD. 

There is a current way of thinking to this effect: 
that for some thousands of years God frequently 
interposed directly in the world’s affairs, and that 
then he finally ceased from all immediate mani¬ 
festation of himself. It is believed that he talked 
with Adam and Enoch ; that he met Abraham 
face to face as a friend ; that*to Moses and Joshua 
and a long line of Jewish worthies he gave his 
immediate commands ; that when his people were 
in special need he appeared to deliver them ; that 
to David and Isaiah and all the Scriptural writers 
he intrusted direct messages for mankind; that 
in his Son he made a surpassing disclosure of 
himself; that for a time afterward he wrought 
miracles through the Disciples, and dictated fur¬ 
ther messages to them ; and that then — when 
the last New Testament book was written, say 
about 90 A. D. — the heavens were shut up, and 
there has been no audible Divine voice and no 
visible Divine presence in the world since then, 
in any such sense as there was before. We 


A PRESENT GOD. 


203 


have, it is supposed, for our guidance simply the 
record of what God did and said in those earlier 
days. 

Does not this seem a little like shutting God 
out of our present world ? Is it the highest way 
of thinking, to suppose that he used to appear 
more plainly to men than he ever does now ? that 
he was formerly a frequent visitor to earth, but 
now for eighteen hundred years we have had only 
the story of his former visits ? 

Suppose we were to think in this way: that in 
every age, and never more than now, God di¬ 
rectly puts into the hearts of men all right 
thoughts and all noble impulses ; that he raises 
up heroes to do his work just as truly in America 
as he did in Judaea; that Columbus was just as 
much guided by God to discover this country as 
were the children of Israel to find the Promised 
Land; that Washington was as divinely led as 
Joshua or Gideon ; that God just as really chose 
Abraham Lincoln to be his servant and the leader 
of his people as he chose David to be king of 
Israel. When we read in Exodus that the build¬ 
ers of the Temple were “ filled with the Spirit of 
God ” to work in gold and silver and wood, to 
engrave and to embroider, would it be a wrong 
way of thinking for us to believe that quite as 
truly the Divine Spirit guided Watt to invent 


204 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the steam-engine, and Arkwright the spinning- 
jenny, and Morse the telegraph ? 

In a word, suppose in everything that is beau¬ 
tiful to sight or noble to the imagination or be¬ 
neficent to mankind we saw the presence of God, 
and that especially we received all true and in¬ 
spiring thoughts and all impulses to right action 
as coming directly from him : might we not thus 
believe that he is just as much in the world as he 
ever was ? 

To some people there may appear, in refusing 
to discriminate between the Divine disclosures re¬ 
corded in the Scriptures and those of this present 
time, something almost profane. But I own that 
to me the profanity, if there be any, seems to lie 
in the putting of God at a distance of eighteen 
hundred years. That he is the 44 God of the 
whole earth ” and of every age ; that he is no 
more the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of 
Jacob than he is 44 my God ” to every heart that 
looks up to him; that we all do 44 live and move 
and have our being in him ” — this seems to me 
in the very spirit of the Scriptures themselves. 
Nor do I find in the Scriptures the least hint of 
any withdrawal of that immediate, special pres¬ 
ence of God which we have somehow come to 
suppose has faded out since the Apostolic days. 

Is it not a mistake to study the Bible on the 


A PRESENT GOD. 


205 


theory that we find in its histories a method of 
Divine administration that has now passed away ? 
Would not a higher use be found in learning to 
look at our own times more as the Jews looked 
at theirs ? 

For example, one great feature of the Old Tes¬ 
tament narrative is the appearance of leaders 
whom God raised up to deliver his people from 
their enemies. Now, modern history — if we 
read it as reverently as the Jews read theirs — is 
full of such instances. Take the case of Joan of 
Arc. She was a pure, devout, simple-minded 
girl, who saw her country desolated by the cru¬ 
elties of a foreign invader. She felt herself 
called of God, in visions, to deliver France. She 
overcame all obstacles, made her way to the court, 
impressed her simple and sublime faith on worldly 
prelates and warriors; and when she headed the 
armies of France victory went with her, and the 
English, after fifty years of conquest, were driven 
out to return no more. Through it all she re¬ 
mained the same pure, pitiful, humble maiden; 
and when her work was crowned by a martyr’s 
death, her last words were of sorrow for her mur¬ 
derers. Was she not as truly called and inspired 
of God as Deborah or David ? 

We may find another example nearer to us — 
in the person of one who may perhaps stand on 


206 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the canvas of history as the greatest figure of this 
generation. In the unique life of Abraham Lin¬ 
coln nothing is more striking than the develop¬ 
ment, during the years of his great work, of a 
profound sense of being an instrument in the 
hands of a Divine Power. It is the more strik¬ 
ing, because Lincoln’s character was at the far¬ 
thest remove from the sentimental and the fanci¬ 
ful. His was the intellect of common sense and 
of daylight. By taste and by lifelong occupation 
he was a politician, a calling of all others most 
remote from sentiment and romance. To the 
last he seldom gave expression to religious moods; 
the easy patter of pious phrases was foreign to 
his nature. But when at his election and inaugu¬ 
ration the weighty burden of the nation’s inter¬ 
ests rested upon his shoulders, there showed itself 
in him a deep, simple sense of the need of some 
higher than human guidance. And as years went 
on, and the mighty drama widened, and immeas¬ 
urable issues of human welfare were at stake in the 
contest, there shone at times through his homely 
wisdom, and the jesting that eased the else un¬ 
bearable load, something of the solemn fervor of 
a Hebrew prophet. His last State paper—his 
second inaugural — rises to a tone rarely equaled 
in moral sublimity in all the literature of states¬ 
manship. There is in it the faith and the un- 


A PRESENT GOD. 


207 


conquerable patience of him who works with God, 
the charity of him who has learned of Christ. 
And under this man’s guidance the nation that is 
the world’s best hope was saved from destruc¬ 
tion, and freedom was given to a race of slaves. 
Should we not be blind and deaf if we did not 
recognize that God called Abraham Lincoln, and 
gave him his work to do and guided him to 
do it, as truly as he ever called and guided any 
man ? 

If we read history with thoroughly Jewish eyes, 
we should find it full of special interpositions — 
perhaps of miracles. The arrival of the Monitor 
in Hampton Roads on the very morning when 
our navy and sea-coast lay helpless before the 
Merrimac, would not, we may be sure, have been 
recorded by an old Hebrew scribe without some 
intimation of a Divine hint at the right mo¬ 
ment to the Monitor’s commander. But it is 
best not to press too closely our interpretation of 
the ways of Providence. The Jews were apt to 
go a little too far in this, as Jesus warned them, 
when he told them not to judge that the men on 
whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above 
others. We are not always to conclude that the 
beaten party is heaven’s enemy. Jewish history 
itself may be read with some reservations as 
to the historian’s interpretations of the Divine 


208 


A LIVING FAITH. 


procedure. But this is the noble quality in that 
history, that it everywhere recognizes that right¬ 
eousness exalteth a nation. “ Happy is that peo¬ 
ple whose God is the Lord ” — the people that is 
faithful in serving the Holy One — such is the 
burden of the Hebrew Scriptures. And we might 
read them with infinite profit if we would lay 
hold on this great truth, so nobly and variously 
set forth, and not, like children, fix our eyes for¬ 
ever on the marvels and prodigies. 

From the military and political life of the Jews, 
let us turn to their distinctively religious life for 
modern parallels. Take the case of the prophets. 
A prophet was a man who felt himself intrusted 
with a special message from the Lord to the peo¬ 
ple. The message was not usually a prediction 
of future events. It was, characteristically, an 
exhortation as to conduct. The prophet came, 
full charged and on fire, to rebuke the people for 
their idolatry, their grossness, their self-indul¬ 
gence ; to rouse and recall them to serve the liv¬ 
ing God by holiness of life. Prophecy, in a like 
sense, seems to have been a common gift among 
the early Christian believers. Have the prophets 
ceased? What shall we say when John Wesley 
goes through England, among a people fallen 
largely into irreligion and immorality, and by his 
strong word of repentance and faith sets men by 


A PRESENT GOD. 


209 


tens of thousands on earnest Christian living, and 
starts a new life in the heart of England ? Had 
not John Wesley as good a commission as God 
ever gave any man? Was he not as truly a 
prophet — let us say, as Habbakuk? Not to speak 
lightly of Habbakuk; he had his living word for 
the people he came to: but why, in magnifying 
God’s gifts to the Jews of old, should we refuse 
to see that he has just as good gifts for other 
peoples and other times ? 

We read that Jonah preached righteousness to 
the Ninevites, and they repented. In our own 
cities, to-day, a man is preaching righteousness, 
and multitudes are repenting. Is not Mr. Moody 
as really sent by God as Jonah was ? Is not his 
message as true and his preaching as fruitful? 
Had the old Hebrew who tried to run away from 
his duty, and who mourned because the people 
heeded him and so escaped destruction — had 
.he the marks of a higher commission than the 
American preacher? Mr. Moody would doubt¬ 
less shrink from being called a prophet; but he 
is sure that he has a Divine message, and he so 
delivers it that men hear and heed him — which 
is the great thing, whatever name we call it by. 

There is one church that is consistent in its 
doctrine and its practice. It declares, like most 
14 


210 


A LIVING FAITH. 


churches, that the Psalms of David are inspired, 
and modern hymns are not; and that no unin¬ 
spired words can be as good as inspired; hence 
it will sing no hymns but David’s. The logic 
is all on its side. But, nevertheless, the other 
churches will not stop singing “ Jesus, lover of 
my soul,” and “There is a land of pure delight,” 
and “ Nearer, my God, to thee,” and a thousand 
others. Why should it not be believed that these 
words came to Watts and Wesley and saints in 
the various ages just as truly by inspiration of 
God as David’s psalms came to him ? 

This is not leveling down , it is leveling up. It 
is not disparaging the Bible — it is exalting the 
God of the Bible, the God who dwells with his 
people just as closely as he dwelt with ancient 
Israel. Shall we not say more closely ? since for 
us Jesus Christ has spoken and lived and died, 
and shown us our Father more clearly than he 
was seen in olden time. Nor did Christ, ascend¬ 
ing into heaven, leave us bereft. He showed us 
the way, and himself led us, to joyful, living com¬ 
munion with that God who is all in all. 

The heroes, the prophets, the saints — their 
roll is not closed ; it never will be. Sinai, Tabor, 
Calvary — the Presence that shone from them 
has not ceased to shine. It fills the earth and the 


A PRESENT GOD. 


211 


heavens. We have not to ask, “ Let God de¬ 
scend from heaven ” — our prayer should rather 
be, “ Open our eyes, that we may see.” The 
vision that outshining the mid-day sun trans¬ 
formed Paul into a new man, the vision whose 
glory broke upon the dying Stephen, still reveals 
itself in supreme moments of men’s lives. The 
voice that spoke to Moses from the burning bush, 
that called to the child Samuel in the night, that 
was heard by Elijah in the stillness that followed 
the earthquake ; the voice that summoned the 
twelve to leave all and follow Christ, that said to 
the penitent, “ Thy sins are forgiven,” that spoke 
her name to Mary by the sepulcher in the garden 
— that voice still speaks to us when our hearts 
are hushed to listen. 

This morning I looked upon the earth in the 
loveliness of the young June day — beauty around 
and above ; at my feet the dandelion’s feathery 
globes and the wild strawberry’s golden cups ; 
before me the wooded hill-side, with its deep, soft 
masses of greenery; in the distance the melting 
blue of the hills ; above, the tender depths of the 
sky and the billowy whiteness of clouds ; earth 
and air vocal with sounds of happy life. And I 
said, “ Surely God is in this place ! ” Yes ; and 
he is in the crowded and surging streets of 
yonder city; in every human heart that toils and 


212 


A LIVING FAITH. 


suffers and aspires. He is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living. The God of Judaea, and 
of the whole world no less; our God, if we will 
receive him; and his unexhausted fullness for¬ 
ever pours itself into every willing heart. 


XXVIII. 


INSPIRATION. 

When, in talking about religion, men speak of 
inspiration, they generally mean only the inspira¬ 
tion of the Bible. But this is as if speaking of 
“ patriotism ” we should mean only the patriot¬ 
ism of the Greeks at Thermopylae, or of the Amer¬ 
icans at Bunker Hill. The inspiration of the 
Scriptures is a great fact; but the inspiration of 
all the true children of God is a greater fact. 

What is inspiration ? It is the immediate ac¬ 
tion of the Divine Spirit upon the human mind. 
It is the presence of God in the soul to illumine 
it. It is the Heavenly Father’s direct personal 
guidance of his earthly children. 

Such a relation is implied in any true thought 
of God. What is our sonship toward him but 
just this, that, if we will let him, he will come 
into the closest fellowship with us, and walk hand 
in hand with us? We say that not a sparrow 
falls to the ground without him, that he is in 
every leaf that flutters in the wind, the every- 
where-present, all-upholding spirit of the uni- 


214 


A LIVING FAITH. 


verse. And can we imagine that the heart of 
man alone is unvisited by him ? Can we suppose 
that the soul that in love and trust looks up to 
him fails of the immediate, illuminating, vitaliz¬ 
ing presence of the Spirit of all truth and good¬ 
ness ? This is the very heart of Christian faith. 

The Bible, and especially the New Testament, 
is full of this idea, of the direct communication of 
the believer with the Divine Spirit of truth. 
Christ’s whole teaching and ministry led up to 
this. When he was about to depart — when, 
seemingly, his whole work must fall to the ground 
through the loss of its leader — this was his su¬ 
preme word of consolation and hope: “I will 
send you the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth ; he 
shall abide with you always.” And after Christ’s 
death the New Testament churches went on their 
way strong, jubilant, all-conquering, in this sense 
of the Spirit’s presence. See what it did for 
them ! Here were hundreds of little communities 
scattered widely apart, gathered out of Judaism 
and heathenism; with only thirteen Apostles, 
who could visit each church only at long inter¬ 
vals ; at first without a written Gospel; having 
only an occasional epistle from Paul or one of the 
others. What saved them from falling apart a 
hundred ways and relapsing into their old condi¬ 
tion? If we study the records of their inner life, 


INSPIRATION. 


215 


we find as the central fact, by which everything 
stood, the presence of the Holy Spirit. That is, 
the believers felt, and lived by the feeling, that 
God himself was in the midst of them and in the 
heart of each of them. They recognized a Divine 
Presence, whence flowed light, strength, joy, 
peace. The New Testament Epistles forever re¬ 
vert to that as the source and mainspring of Chris¬ 
tian life. “ Ye are led by the Spirit.” “ Walk 
in the Spirit.” “ The Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you.” “ The Spirit is life.” First, last, always, 
this is the great thing; a Present God, who il¬ 
lumines and quickens, whose very life flows 
through mind and heart and will. The relation 
of father and child, of husband and wife, of mind 
and body, all are too little to express the intimacy 
between the loving, trusting soul and its God. 

Paul never speaks of his own relation with the 
Divine Spirit as generically different from that 
of the other believers. His whole feeling evi¬ 
dently is that all stood, or should stand, in the 
same vital connection with the one Spirit. It 
manifested itself in various forms, according to 
the different constitutions of men; one was in¬ 
spired to exhort, another to instruct, another to 
administer government. But all alike were in¬ 
spired, though in different directions. 

The testimony of John on this subject is very 


216 


A LIVING FAITH. 


striking. The direct inspiring presence of the 
Divine Spirit in the sanctified human spirit is an 
idea that shines from almost every page of his 
Gospel and Epistles. He teaches, in the most 
explicit language, that the believers received 
spiritual knowledge directly from God himself ; 
and he expects his own words to be received be¬ 
cause consonant with this highest inward witness. 
This is what he says: “ Ye have an unction from 
the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have 
not written unto you because ye know not the 
truth, but because ye know it.” 

To say that Paul or John supposed there was 
in himself any inspiration different, not only in 
degree, but in hind — essentially different in its 
generic quality — from the inspiration of the 
humblest Christian in Ephesus or Rome, is to 
say what does not seem warranted by their own 
words. To say that the whole early Church had 
an inspiration differing essentially from any in¬ 
spiration possible to the whole Church now, is to 
say that the secret of Christianity has been lost. 

“Is it true, then, that all men are inspired in 
the same degree ? Is the inspiration of any good 
man to-day equal to Paul’s inspiration?” Ob¬ 
vious facts afford an easy answer. The degree of 
a faculty is tested by the results it can produce. 
One man can lift a thousand pounds, and another 


INSPIRATION. 


217 


only a hundred ; their muscular strength is the 
same in kind, but differs in degree. Compare 
the writings of Paul and of any modern theolo¬ 
gian by the standard of spiritual power and rich¬ 
ness. We say Paul was the more highly inspired, 
because, in point of fact, we find in his writings a 
fullness, a spiritual insight, a moral enthusiasm, 
which no modern writer has equaled. No theory 
of inspiration is going to affect the value of the 
Holy Scriptures. They will always be prized for 
what they are . No theory is going to make men 
prefer crab-apples to oranges, or lichens to roses. 
And so long as men find in the writings of Paul 
and John and their colleagues a power to comfort, 
to energize, to uplift, greater than they find in 
any other writings, nothing that can be said or 
unsaid about inspiration will lower the New Tes¬ 
tament in men’s affections. 

But of this we may be sure, Paul never 
dreamed that future generations were going to 
turn back to what he and his fellow-apostles 
wrote as the last distinct revelation made by the 
Holy Spirit. The whole tone of his writings as¬ 
serts that the one great universal teacher is God 
present in his children’s hearts; that every true 
and noble thought is an inspiration of God; and 
that for each special emergency God gives spe¬ 
cial light to whoever will receive it. When the 


218 


A LIVING FAITH. 


church in Corinth fell into perplexity, Paul 
wrote to them. When the Galatian churches had 
troubles of another sort, he wrote another and dif¬ 
ferent letter to them. Suppose Paul could have 
foreseen that there would be a church in New 
York, in its, circumstances more different from 
the churches in Galatia and in Corinth than these 
were different from each other. Would he have 
expected the church in New York to turn back 
to what he wrote to the Galatians and Corinth¬ 
ians as more authoritative than any later utter¬ 
ance of the Spirit? Would he not rather have 
expected the church in New York to go directly, 
in faith and humility, to the Divine Father him¬ 
self, and get from him as direct and true an in¬ 
spiration for its peculiar difficulties as came to 
the Corinthian Church for theirs ? 

Men fear that such thought as this is danger¬ 
ous ; that it leads to vagueness, to license, to the 
subversion of all settled truth. That is exactly 
what the Jews and Judaizing Christians thought 
about the Gospel as Paul preached it. The great 
Apostle spent half his life in conflict with men 
who contended for the Law , for a full, fixed, defi¬ 
nite system, against the “freedom of the Spirit ” 
that Paul stood for. The Spirit ? What was it ? 
Something vague, unseen and uncertain ; a notion 
of visionaries and enthusiasts; a will-o’-the-wisp. 


INSPIRATION. 


219 


leading nobody knew whither! Whereas, here 
was the Law, written out in plain black and 
white; nothing visionary ; everything fixed, defi¬ 
nite, comfortable! And that is precisely the way 
men now talk about the New Testament. The 
very writings in which Paul asserted the glorious 
liberty of the sons of God, the free access of every 
child to its heavenly Father — these are now set 
up by men as a second Law, with all the pre¬ 
cision and immobility and legality which Paul 
declared the Church had outgrown! 

Paul never scouted the dangers of Christian 
liberty as imaginary. He knew they were very 
real. He knew that the Gospel itself could be 
made a cloak for unrighteousness; that God’s 
free love would be made a pretext for carelessness 
in sin ; that Christian liberty might degenerate 
into heathen license. But he knew, what the 
safeguard was. 44 If we live in the Spirit, let us 
also walk in the Spirit! ” He had just told them 
what walking in the Spirit meant: 44 Love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
meekness, temperance.” So, again, he says — 
and Paul’s writings are full of the same idea: 
44 Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty: only 
use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh ; but 
by love serve one another.” He hardly ever says 
44 liberty,” that he does not say 44 love ” right af¬ 
terwards. 


220 


A LIVING FAITH. 


The safeguard against error, the preparation 
to receive true Divine inspiration, lies in earn¬ 
est Christian living. “ If any man will do the 
will of my Father, he shall know of the doc¬ 
trine.” 


XXIX. 


THE EVER-PRESENT SPIRIT. 

If there be any to whom the idea expressed in 
the preceding chapter — that every Christian 
may be directly inspired by the Divine Spirit — 
seems untrue and unscriptural, we call the atten¬ 
tion of such to an incident recorded in Acts xix. 
1-7. Paul, in one of his journeys, came upon a 
company of professed disciples, of whom he asked 
— apparently as the first question — “ Have ye 
received the Holy Spirit since ye believed ? ” 
They answered, “We have not so much as heard 
whether there be any Holy Spirit! ” And it ap¬ 
peared that they had only been baptized into the 
earlier faith of John the Baptist. Paul declared 
to them the higher truth of Christ, which they 
at once accepted; and immediately “ The Holy 
Spirit came on them.” Now, to any who, profess¬ 
ing Christian faith, ignore the direct illuminat¬ 
ing action of the Holy Spirit upon men’s souls, 
the question seems appropriate: “ Unto what, 
then, were ye baptized ? ” — unto a legal system, 
or into direct, joyful, inspiring communion with 


222 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the Heavenly Father ? unto Judaism, or unto 
Christ? 

This truth, of an ever-present Spirit, is so great 
that any single statement of it of necessity fails 
to fully present all sides of the matter. We pro¬ 
pose now to take up some of the special questions 
which arise concerning it — referring our readers 
for a fuller treatment of the whole subject to the 
New Testament. 

First, then: “ Does not this idea of a direot 
inspiration of all believers do away with the value 
of the Scriptures ? ” Not at all. The general 
teaching of all Christianity is that each believer 
is the child of God, and has direct help from him 
in holy living ; but that does not militate against 
the mutual helpfulness of brethren to one another 
in the Christian life. So, our having the light of 
knowledge direct from God does not alter the fact 
that we may also be illuminated by the light 
reflected from men nearer to him than we are. 
Take Paul’s splendid figure. The Divine Spirit, 
he says, dwells in every member of the Church, 
as the human spirit dwells in every part of the 
body. But as no limb of the body is independent 
of the rest, so neither is the highest or the hum¬ 
blest member of the Church independent of the 
other members. The foot cannot get along with¬ 
out the hand, or the eye without the ear. So, to 


THE EVER-PRESENT SPIRIT. 


223 


apply the figure, neither can we dispense with 
those whom Christ set in his church as capable 
of instructing and helping its members to the 
latest generation. 

To drop all metaphor : here were men, whom 
we name prophets and evangelists and apostles, 
to some of whom were given transcendent powers 
of discerning and applying moral truth ; others 
of whom were providentially set as witnesses and 
historians of events bearing exceptional moral 
significance ; while from some of them we derive 
our entire knowledge of that greatest fact of 
human history, the life of Jesus Christ. What 
these men recorded, out of their experience and 
observation under the Spirit’s guidance, has a 
surpassing and imperishable value. Give up the 
testimony of David and Isaiah and Paul and 
John — give up the record of Christ’s life, be¬ 
cause we have the direct inspiration of God’s 
Spirit ? As soon destroy all recorded science and 
literature, because we have the faculties of reason 
and imagination ! 

But, there comes an objection from the other 
side : “ Is not the Bible enough ? What need of 
any farther inspiration ? ” To which there is a 
two-fold answer. First, a written revelation is 
useless unless men are divinely guided — inspired 
— to interpret it. “ The things of the Spirit are 


224 


A LIVING FAITH. 


spiritually discerned .” Out of forgetfulness of 
this — out of an interpretation of the Bible in a 
dry, hard, literal fashion, unlighted by the Spirit 
in whom dwells faith and hope and love — what 
endless misfortune has fallen on the Church ! Men 
have defended slavery with the Bible. They 
have justified polygamy by it. The Pope sup¬ 
ports his infallibility by it. A thousand supersti¬ 
tions and wrongs have appealed to its authority. 
Why is all this ? It is because men have gone 
to the Bible, not under the influence of the Spirit 
— not full of the pure desire for truth, the humil¬ 
ity, the charity, which are the tokens of His 
presence within. “ The letter hilleth ,” said Paul, 
“ but the Spirit giveth life.” A modern writer 
tells us, not without reason, that “ culture ” is 
necessary to understand the Bible. But the in¬ 
tellectual culture of which he speaks is possible 
to very few. Vastly more important, and possi¬ 
ble to the humblest reader that can hardly spell 
out the words, is that moral culture — that dis¬ 
cipline, under God’s teaching, in fidelity and sin¬ 
cerity and love — which will enable one to appre¬ 
hend and assimilate those elements which are 
vital and nutritious. So, we say, the inspiration 
of the Bible itself is lost on any man who is not 
inspired to understand it. 

Rut again, the Scriptures necessarily leave un- 


THE EVER-PRESENT SPIRIT. 225 

touched a great field of matters which are very 
important to us. There is the vast range of 
purely personal situations — questions as to indi¬ 
vidual conduct, under circumstances to which 
there is no exact parallel or even no close analogy 
in the Scriptural writings. In such cases, every 
devout Christian does go to his Heavenly Father, 
with a sincere faith that he will be rightly guided. 
He seeks inspiration for that special occasion. 
Observe, it is no “ new Gospel ” that we are de¬ 
claring ; it is only an application of principles 
which every Christian acts upon. But men draw 
a purely arbitrary line in the matter. With no 
Scriptural warrant, they set up a distinction in 
this respect between matters of individual con¬ 
duct and of general truth. But we have no rea¬ 
son to suppose God inspires men now about the 
former and not about the latter. We see plainly 
that there are general truths of conduct, applica¬ 
tions of ethical principles, on which men have 
been and must be led by something outside of the 
written Scriptures — by the same Spirit that in¬ 
spired the writers of Scripture. Such matters 
are, for example, questions of civil liberty, ques¬ 
tions between laborer and employer, and almost 
all that we speak of as the “ social ” reforms of 
our time. These involve the highest moral con¬ 
siderations ; many of them are painfully com- 
15 


226 


A LIVING FAITH. 


plicated and difficult; no exact parallel to them 
could arise in the times when the Scriptures were 
written. Now, about these things that touch the 
life of the whole human brotherhood, it is our 
privilege to go to the All-wise and All-loving 
for direction. And if we go to him in trust and 
love, he will just as surely give us in his own 
way the special teaching we need, as he gave it 
to the Apostles when they laid their special needs 
before him. No miracle will be wrought, but 
through the right use of men’s normal faculties, 
when they are held in sincere and hearty subjec¬ 
tion to the Perfect Will, the needful guidance 
will be given. 

So, too, on purely religious matters, every age 
and perhaps every thoughtful mind has its own 
special doubts and questionings. The testimony 
of the inspired men of old does indeed throw a 
steady and precious light on the great primary 
spiritual truths. But new aspects of old ques¬ 
tions arise. What the Scriptures really testify 
on many points is matter of controversy. The 
nature and authority of the Scriptural record it¬ 
self comes in question. So, in many ways, the 
need arises — and to some, the need is most im¬ 
perative ; keener than any bodily hunger ; deeper 
than any but God can satisfy — of God’s own 
voice in the soul, speaking to it the truth in which 
is peace and life. 


THE EVER-PRESENT SPIRIT. 227 

A single further point is all we can now con¬ 
sider. “ Can a Divine inspiration in the mind be 
surely distinguished from a mistaken human im¬ 
pulse ? If not, will there not come in mistake 
and self-conceit and folly ? ” There certainly is 
no universal and infallible rule for distinguishing 
the inward voice of truth, any more than there is 
an infallible rule for interpreting the Bible. But 
there are one or two great guarding principles. 
First, and chief, that which Christ gave for dis¬ 
tinguishing the false prophets from the true ones, 
“ by their fruits ye shall know them." Whatever 
belief is proved experimentally to make for pur¬ 
ity, humility, uprightness, gentleness, love, aspira¬ 
tion—for the Christ-like qualities in character— 
proves itself of Divine inspiration. Whatever 
belief, however attractive to the intellect, proves 
on fair trial to weaken conscience, to build up 
pride, to make men egotistical, harsh, selfish — 
that proves itself the offspring not of Divine wis¬ 
dom, but of human folly. Farther, this is impor¬ 
tant : if any man finds that what seems to him a 
truth yet appears to be inconsistent with what is 
held and has been held by the best men he knows 
of, let him challenge his idea, cross-question it, 
put it on practical trial in his own life, lay it con¬ 
stantly before God in prayer, and constantly dis¬ 
cipline himself in humility and in love, before he 


228 


A LIVING FAITH. 


concludes that God has really shown to him what 
apparently he has not shown to others. The 
presumption in favor of any established opinion 
of mankind becomes far stronger in favor of a 
conviction regarding moral truth which has been 
held by a long succession of good men. Yet, the 
highest court of appeal is God himself. No man, 
however eminent — no body of men, however 
august in goodness and wisdom — has the right 
to finally close the questioning of an earnest soul. 
Let such a one remember that the best and wisest 
of all have bidden us go to God rather than man. 
“ If any of you lack wisdom,” said the Apostle 
James — and he wrote not to scholars, not to men 
with the New Testament in their hands, but to a 
scattered multitude, mostly of ignorant and un¬ 
lettered folks, with no written gospel, wise only 
in that they knew the love of Christ, and felt God 
present in their hearts— “ if any of you lack wis¬ 
dom, let him ask ” — not me, the inspired James ; 
not the Apostolic Council— “ let him ask of 6JW, 
that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth 
not, and it shall be given him.” 


XXX. 


THE KEVELATION OE CHRIST. 

In our day, the chief care of the apologetic de¬ 
fenders of Christianity seems to be to maintain 
the genuineness of the Christian miracles, in view 
of the tendencies of natural philosophy to deny 
the miraculous altogether, and the tendencies of 
historical criticism to raise questions as to the 
evidences of the early miracles. And the issue is 
often so stated as to appear the fundamental ques¬ 
tion concerning the Christian religion itself. 
Christianity, it is said, professes to be a direct 
message from heaven to earth, conveying the 
most momentous truths, and the message is 
proved to be authentic by the supernatural won¬ 
ders which attended its delivery. To lose belief 
in these is to lose assurance that the message is 
genuine and trustworthy, and so to be left in 
doubt as to the supreme questions concerning hu¬ 
man destiny. 

But, however great may be the legitimate in¬ 
terest of the inquiry in regard to miracles, we 
more than doubt whether it touches the deepest 


230 


A LIVING FAITH. 


truth in Christianity. That conception which 
finds in supernatural prodigies the strongest evi¬ 
dences of a moral and religious system does not 
commend itself to our minds. We are not ques¬ 
tioning the reality of the Christian miracles ; we 
are questioning their right to that chief place in 
the Christian system which is often assigned to 
them. And to deny them such a place seems 
wholly consistent with the teachings of Jesus 
himself, who made it a matter of reproach to the 
Jews that they required physical marvels as the 
condition of their religious faith. “Except ye 
see signs and wonders,” he said, reproachfully, 
“ ye will not believe.” And again : “A wicked 
and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.” 

It seems to us that the vital truth taught by 
Christ is not to be identified with any elaborate 
philosophy built upon his words or those of his 
immediate followers ; and that it does not depend 
for its guarantee on supernatural prodigies which 
themselves require to be verified at the distance 
of many centuries. We believe that the revela¬ 
tion made by Christ is found in Christ’s own 
character — his character, that is, judged in the 
same way we judge the character of any man. 
It is the disposition, the traits, the whole set of 
his nature, expressed in words and deeds : it is the 
man Christ Jesus, so plainly and vividly de- 


THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. 


231 


scribed in the Gospels that the most ignorant who 
listens to the story gets a sense of what he was ; 
described there with such inner evidence of true 
portraiture that the profoundest study brings 
men to recognize the unique greatness of the 
original — it is this life , thus recorded, and re¬ 
produced as it has been in some degree in count¬ 
less other lives, that is the supreme revelation of 
our religion. 

Consider at what point it is that men most 
need light and guidance. It is in answer to the 
great question, How are we to live ? How are we 
to meet and overcome the difficulties that beset 
us within and without, and rise to victory and 
success ? Every man feels himself hard beset 
by ignorance, by infirmities, by lapses of his own 
will toward evil, by the perversities of other men, 
by the unequal conditions of society, by losses 
and bereavements and the sense of impending 
death. And the question with every man is: 
“ How am I so to deal with these conditions as 
to stand victorious ? First, what state is possible 
to me — whether assured happiness, or stoical 
submission only, or what other best attainable 
thing ? And next, by what way of living is this 
highest possibility to be reached ? ” Every gen¬ 
erous man asks the same question in behalf of the 
whole race. He asks it not only with regard to 


232 


A LIVING FAITH. 


man’s lower wants, but concerning his social nat¬ 
ure, and concerning that in him which strives 
to look upward and to look forward. Is there a 
God with whom I have living relations ? Is there 
an existence beyond the grave? Man stands 
encompassed with these questions, and longs for 
an answer. What am I to live for, and how am 
I to live ? 

The life of Jesus Christ is an answer to that 
question. And the application of the answer lies 
in living as he did. 

The true wonder of the life of Jesus is largely 
lost to us because we are so childish that we do 
not keep steadily in mind what is truly wonder¬ 
ful and admirable. We are more impressed by 
physical marvels than by the things of the in¬ 
ward man. But it is not in the miracles of Jesus 
that his highest greatness is found ; it is in his 
character. That one should turn water into wine 
is far less great and significant than that one in 
the agonies of the cross should pray that his tor¬ 
turers may be forgiven. We read, marveling, 
that the winds and waves hushed when Jesus 
said “ Peace, be still.” Yet what is that, in a 
true view, compared to the power by which he 
himself went through the storms of life, the 
fickleness of the multitude, the faithlessness of 
friends, his rejection by his own city and nation, 


THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. 


233 


the assaults of temptation upon liis own spirit, 
the darkening close of his career — and kept him¬ 
self serene, unyielding, victorious unto the end? 
It taxes our wonder to the utmost that the eyes 
of one born blind should be opened by a touch. 
Yet far greater is it that Jesus, when his near¬ 
est friends, whom he had besought to watch with 
him in his hour of supreme sorrow, fell asleep, had 
for them only a tender word, 44 The spirit indeed 
is willing, but the flesh is weak.” We look upon 
it as the last crowning marvel that a man three 
days dead should be by a word recalled to life. 
Yet for us an infinitely deeper meaning lies in 
this: that men and women in the lowest depths 
of sin should be enabled to rise into pure and 
noble living by the power of sympathizing love. 
The true wonder of the universe is when the pur¬ 
est, the holiest, the most Godlike, goes down 
among thieves and harlots, and they turn to him 
with tears, and through love answering to love 
are purified and healed. 

The life of Jesus, we have said, is itself an an¬ 
swer to the great question, 44 What are we to live 
for, and how are we to live ? ” See how much is 
settled for us when we acknowledge — as who 
does not ? — that the life depicted in the Gospels 
was the most successful life that history records. 
For this man lacked wholly those things which 


284 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the world generally counts as success. He was 
poor; he had no earthly honor, except some 
fickle admiration among the population of an ob¬ 
scure province ; his best friends forsook him in 
his extremity; he died, while still young, the 
painful death of a malefactor. And yet, what 
thoughtful man would be tempted for a moment 
by the highest honors, wealth, friendship, long 
life, prosperity of any kind, that ever was attained 
by any man, if as an alternative there were of¬ 
fered to him a life the counterpart of Christ’s? 

Through him we have learned what is best 
worth living for. We have learned that the no¬ 
blest success, the only success worth counting, 
lies in disposition and character. To be as Christ 
was (it is in vain to try to express that in any 
single word or group of words)— that, we see, is 
the thing to live for. Half the great question is 
answered in this. 

But this other inquiry comes up at once, Is any 
such life at all possible for mankind at large? 
Was not Christ so wholly different from other 
men that, however we admire, it is useless to try 
to follow? The answer is close at hand. His own 
words (which are a part of his life) supply it. He 
summons his friends to such close and absolute 
likeness to him that they shall be one with him . 
We find that the best and highest of them be- 


THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. 235 

came filled and possessed with that thought so 
as to say, For me to live is Christ. Or, again, if 
we take the history of the world since then, we 
find that there have been in every age men and 
women who, however far below the full attain¬ 
ment of Christ, had in themselves the same spirit 
that was in him, and whose lives showed some¬ 
thing of the same quality as his. It is the author 
of “ Ecce Homo,” we believe, who makes this 
just remark: that before the time of Christ we 
search history almost in vain for any character to 
which we naturally apply the word holy; while 
since his time in almost every Christianized com¬ 
munity there has been some one at least to whom 
the term would instinctively be applied. 

It is possible to some extent to analyze the ele¬ 
ments of the Christ-disposition, though such an 
analysis is to the reality what a written descrip¬ 
tion of one of Raphael’s Madonnas is to the pict¬ 
ure itself. We find in the life and words of 
Christ a key-note of character wholly different 
from what had before been struck The highest 
type of classic virtue was the stoical; and at the 
heart of stoicism was pride — in its highest form, 
of lofty self-respect. Christ by no means dis¬ 
carded that principle, but he set as paramount a 
wholly different one. “ Blessed are the 'poor in 
spirit ” is the first beatitude. “ Except ye be- 


236 


A LIVING FAITH. 


come as little children,” it was said, “ ye shall 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Christ 
put as the parent virtue that which we variously 
call humility or faith or love of God. It is all 
one — it is the resting of the soul on a higher 
Power. It is emptying ourselves of self-will, of 
impatient desire, of effort to make ourselves su¬ 
preme in the universe, and yielding our lives to 
the inspiration and control of the Highest. Our 
work is to conform ourselves to the likeness of 
God ; to seek, at cost of all other things most 
prized, a purity, a holiness, a love, like that 
which reigns enthroned over the universe; to 
take refuge from all our failures in the sense of 
that; to receive into our hearts the life of God 
that presses to fill us. 

So, in this same disposition, a new source of 
power is revealed. The old idea of power is hu¬ 
man will — intense, inflexible, bending all things 
to its purpose. But Jesus teaches that a Will in¬ 
finitely higher, wiser, more beneficent than ours 
is guiding the universe; and that our part is to 
conform our disposition to that perfect Will, and 
have no care beyond. That man is strongest 
who, having put himself on the side of God, has 
Omnipotence behind him. 

Or, in another aspect, it is love of men that 
appears as the dominant force in Jesus. That 


THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. 237 

blends in one current with the love of God. For, 
passing into union of will with the Highest, the 
characteristic quality of the Highest fills and 
moves us. In Jesus this divine spirit of benefi¬ 
cence shines with a brightness which baffles the 
attempt to define or describe it. It is the su¬ 
preme passion of his life. It goes out toward 
men as men; it responds to special nobility or 
lovableness in any, as in the beloved disciple, but 
it sweeps in a mighty tide toward those who to 
human thought are not noble or lovable. It is 
the want of men that moves the depths of that 
wonderful soul; it is the lost sheep, the wayward, 
the outcasts, to whom he comes with celestial ten¬ 
derness. And in those ruined lives love works 
the supreme miracle, and at its touch they who 
were morally dead arise and live. 

Or, taking another view, we may see how the 
great besetting ill of mankind — the temptation 
of the flesh —is dealt with by Jesus. In him we 
find no asceticism; he “came eating and drink¬ 
ing ; ” countenancing marriage and raising its 
ideal to that of indissoluble union ; joining in the 
feasts and all the innocent gayety of men. But 
against the evil desires of the flesh he set to work 
a mightier force than men had learned to use be¬ 
fore. Instead of simple will-struggle against 
sensual temptation, he set men upon an enthu- 


238 


A LIVING FAITH. 


siasm so lofty and absorbing that the lower fires 
should be crowded out. Paul put it into one 
sentence: “ Be not drunk with wine, but be 
filled with the Spirit .” Be so full of active love 
for others, of joy in the sense of God’s compan¬ 
ionship, of all noble and generous activities, that 
you shall have no inclination to degrading pleas¬ 
ures. 

We have spoken of the revelation of Christ 
only in. its bearing upon human character. It 
may be said that men crave a direct and sure 
revelation upon other questions — those relating 
to God and immortality. Now, herein lies the 
special adaptedness of Christ’s gospel to the 
wants of this very time. For we see that Jesus 
had just what we long for— a living, ever-present 
consciousness of God. We see that sense of 
Divine companionship enveloping his whole life 
and vitalizing every part of it. Take away from 
the history of Jesus this consciousness of Our 
Father, which gives color to every word and act, 
and there would be left hardly more than inco¬ 
herent fragments. Incomparably the greatest life 
the world has ever seen had this consciousness of 
a holy, living, present God, as its foundation not 
only, but as its atmosphere and very heart. 

And what Jesus does for us is not so much to 
state by authority the abstract truth that there is 


THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. 


239 


such a God: more than that, he sets us oil ways 
of living by which we may come to some such 
personal and vivid apprehension of it as he him¬ 
self had. This is what we want — not an intel¬ 
lectual certainty about God, but, if there be a 
God, a living sense of him and of personal com¬ 
munion with him. And nothing is simpler than 
the way to such a sense if we follow in the foot¬ 
steps of Jesus. It lies in a life of love. It lies 
in drawing near in our own character to Him 
whom we seek. And this is not a mystical fancy. 
It is the most real of realities. The words of 
Jesus, “If any man will do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine,” have been verified in 
numberless lives. The plainest, the most unlet¬ 
tered, those employed in the homeliest vocations, 
no less than those of loftiest intellect, have come 
to this blessed and abiding certainty by the same 
road. And for every one tossed by the profound 
doubts which the intellectual life of this age has 
bred, the true deliverance lies here and here only. 
Not by study, not by philosophical research, but 
by a life of sympathy and helpfulness, of humility, 
of tender love and reverent aspiration, can we 
come to that knowledge of the true God which 
is life eternal. And when we enter into this fel¬ 
lowship we know that as children of God we are 
heirs of immortality. 


240 


A LIVING FAITH. 


The Christian revelation is contained in the 
character of Christ. He only is Christian who is 
Christ-like. Not that there is an exact and 
formal pattern by which character is to be tried. 
“ Whatsoever things are true, just, honest, pure, 
lovely, of good report,” says the Apostle, are to be 
sought. So far as any man who has not known 
of Christ, or has not consciously received him, 
has in any measure come into nobility and sweet¬ 
ness of disposition, we rejoice, and know that he 
has in some way been led by the true light. But 
to the world at large, the Christ of history, yea, 
more, the Christ that shines in countless lives to¬ 
day, stands as the light of men. The supreme 
question, How to live ,— toward what ends, in 
what spirit, with what hope, — receives in the 
life of Christ its highest answer. 


XXXI. 


CHRISTIAN UNION. 

We wish here to speak of that idea which this 
paper’s name (“ The Christian Union ”) expresses, 
and for which above all other things the paper 
stands. 

Our readers know what kind of union we do 
not believe in or look for. We have not the 
slightest expectation of seeing one grand con¬ 
glomerate organism built up by a fusion of all 
sects. Far less do we look to see any one sect 
swallow all the rest, as Aaron’s rod swallowed 
the rods of the magician. The experiment of an 
organized universal church has had one -trial, 
lasting for fifteen hundred years. Its result is 
seen to-day in the Papacy. There will be no 
going back in that direction. Whatever else the 
future may bring, we may be sure it will not 
bring again the subjection of all men beneath a 
world-wide ecclesiastical kingdom. That idea 
stands for despotism and spiritual death. 

The Christian union which we believe in is the 
union of all men in a brotherhood of mutual ser- 
16 


242 


A LIVING FAITH. 


vice, and as children of one Heavenly Father. 
We seek to promote such a unity by developing 
in men that higher nature through which they 
come into communion with the Divine Spirit, and 
into spiritual communion with one another. It 
is the lower faculties that set mankind at vari¬ 
ance. It is selfishness and envy and pride that 
drive men into hatreds and fightings. Just as the 
higher elements of manhood are developed do 
men come into mutual harmony. 

The basis of religion is that universal hunger 
of the heart which only God can supply. It is 
literally a universal hunger. It is man’s craving 
for something above himself, for a power on which 
he can rest and be safe, for something nobler and 
fairer than anything his senses reveal, for a better 
life than he has yet attained. That craving, in 
its lowest form, stirs in the breast of the degraded 
savage. The man of the highest culture feels 
within him a longing for something which the 
best of earth does not afford. That longing but 
one thing can satisfy, and that is God. A God 
above our full comprehension, whom yet we truly 
know; a God in whom all our highest imaginings 
of beauty and moral loveliness are more than 
realized; a God whom the most tender and sacred 
human experiences truly shadow forth to us. 
That God, known by disclosures throughout all 


CHRISTIAN UNION. 


248 


human history, known through the revelation of 
Jesus Christ, but, above all, known through the 
living experience of every human soul that will 
open itself to him — that God supplies the uni¬ 
versal hunger of the race. And they who truly 
feed on him are bound together in a closer com¬ 
munion than any outward rite can express. 

He who truly receives the Divine Spirit is 
quickened by it into love and service toward all 
mankind. It is misleading to say that salvation 
is a matter wholly between the soul and its God. 
That is no complete salvation in which the soul 
simply escapes from suffering. That is no satis¬ 
factory honor to God which ends in a personal 
tribute to him. It is his creatures that he 
would have us serve. All adoration of him is to 
find its completion and counterpart in helping 
our brethren. And all true service of men is 
service done to God. 

We greet as brothers therefore all who in any 
way are toiling for the good of mankind. We 
recognize as belonging to the Christian sphere 
everything which makes for human health and 
happiness. The care of men’s bodies is Christian. 
The good physician is carrying on Christ’s work. 
Social reform, practical benevolence of every 
kind, humanity to the brutes even, is service to 
God. To promote good government is religious 


244 


A LIVING FAITH. 


service. Political reform is as truly a building 
up of tbe kingdom of heaven as missionary labor 
among the heathen. All promotion of knowledge 
is Christian. Whoever is extending in any di¬ 
rection our knowledge of the physical world, or 
of the past history of the race, or of the realm of 
abstract thought, is thereby serving men and do¬ 
ing Christian work. Whoever in the humblest 
sphere of life is carrying other people’s burdens, 
whoever brings smiles to careworn faces, whoever 
so much as gives a cup of cold water to a little 
child, is in so far doing Christ’s work. 

If we are asked, “ What! Do you call people 
Christians for doing such things?” we answer: 
Just so far as any course of action or any single 
act is inspired by unselfish desire to help others, 
it is essentially Christ-like and Christian. If any 
one thinks differently, let him study Christ’s par¬ 
able of the Last Judgment (Matthew xxv. 31- 
46) and see on what ground its awards are given. 

Great church councils, meetings of the Evan¬ 
gelical Alliance, and the like, are in their way 
notable illustrations of Christian union. But a 
far higher illustration is given whenever a whole 
people together is stirred by a noble impulse. So 
was it in the dark days of our war, when mothers 
gave their sons, and soldiers gave their lives, and 
men and women uncounted said: “ Let us perish, 


CHRISTIAN UNION. 


245 


let all that is dearest to us be lost, but let the 
nation live ! Let freedom prevail! ” So was it 
when the heart of a whole people responded to . 
the solemn words of Lincoln’s last inaugural, 

“ With malice toward none, with charity for 
all; ” “ with fidelity to the right as God gives us 
to see the right.” So was it when Chicago lay 
in ashes, and, as when a man receives a wound 
the whole body feels the shock and pours its vi¬ 
tality to the injured place, so the whole nation 
North and South thrilled with sympathy, and 
wealth gave of its abundance and poverty of its 
dearth to aid the sufferers. Whenever men’s 
hearts are melted together by a great tide of no¬ 
ble sympathy and devotion to a good cause, there 
is the Spirit of the Lord and there is Christian 
union. 

“ But,” it may be said, “ do the emotional and 
practical elements make up the whole bond ? Do 
you take no account of Truth as a tie by which 
men must be united? ” Yes, we so honor Truth 
that we honor whoever is sincerely seeking her. 
We profoundly respect every man, whether he 
call himself Christian or no, who is giving his life 
to the sacred search for truth. We dare not lay 
a ban on any one who follows in fidelity what 
seems to him the right way. Be his conclusions 
ever so different from ours, we cannot doubt that 


246 


A LIVING FAITH. 


some portion of the Divine Light is given to 
every one who in humility and sincerity seeks for 
it. Men have gone to the stake for ideas which 
to us are as foolishness ; yet, though we may deem 
such in some sense martyrs of error, whoever 
gives his life for his convictions is in the highest 
sense a witness to Truth. 

By no means do we hold that all sincere convic¬ 
tions are alike valuable. But it is only through 
giving the freest play to all sincere convictions 
that mankind can advance toward the truth. We 
do not shrink from nor deprecate manly combat 
between men of different beliefs. It is partly 
through combat that we come to peace ; it is by 
“ proving all things ” that we are enabled at last 
to “hold fast that which is good.” But we 
would see intensity of conviction joined to humil¬ 
ity and childlike disposition. Controversy loses 
its bitterness and barrenness when those who de¬ 
bate are made humble by a sense of their own 
littleness, and reverent by genuine love of truth. 
When earnest men debate in this spirit of humil¬ 
ity and charity, the issue must be not defeat to 
one and victory to the other, but gain for both. 

Out of the infinite diversity and seeming chaos 
of modern thought, we doubt not there will slowly 
emerge a nobler and fairer outline of truth than 
men have seen before. What the full shape will 


CHRISTIAN UNION. 


247 


be no man knows. Physical science will make its 
contribution ; theology will work out a part; po¬ 
litical and social experiences will furnish some¬ 
thing ; and the great common life of mankind will 
test and verify all. Out of chaos rises a new 
world when the Spirit of God broods on the abyss. 
Blind and dead of feeling must he be who does 
not now discern by glimpses the presence of a 
Divine Spirit inspiring and uplifting the world 
toward a future more glorious than the past. 
What that future will be no man can fully tell. 
But this we know: hope will be ampler, faith 
will be brighter, and love will be greatest of all. 


XXXII. 


THE LIVING REVELATION. 

There is one kind of preaching so much more 
effective than any other that it might almost be 
called the only kind. It is that which consists 
in right living. 

Nothing else produces belief as sight does. 
What men need is to see religion. The higher 
forms of faith are usually a very slow growth. 
The power to walk habitually with the unseen 
God, having a vivid and abiding sense of his 
presence, comes late. The great mass of men 
must begin in a very different way. They must 
be taught first in the language, not of spiritual 
imagination, far less of logical reason, but of per¬ 
ception. They must see goodness in other men 
before they can understand what God’s goodness 
is. This is what Christ meant when he told his 
disciples that they were to be the light of the 
world. 

Men may not understand the “ evidences of 
religion,” but they do understand religion itself 
when they see it. When a man is unselfishly 


THE LIVING REVELATION. 


249 


kind to every one about him, they understand 
that. When one in a whirl of temptation and 
corruption is known to stand firm and keep his 
integrity, men understand that. When the sun 
shines, nobody needs an argument to prove that 
it is shining. No one can see an act of courage, 
of generosity, of fidelity, of self-forgetfulness, 
and not feel its excellence. And whenever one 
carries through every part of his life the spirit of 
the Lord Jesus, the spirit of truth and of love, 
every one who sees him knows something of how 
beautiful truth and love are. Men doubt about 
the doctrines and philosophy of religion. But 
when they see a man sweet-tempered under 
vexation, they do not doubt his sweet temper. 
When they see a woman carrying along a worth¬ 
less husband and a load of helpless children, 
by her labor and patience and love, they be¬ 
lieve in her goodness. Truth in its lower form, 
of intellectual statement, may be questioned; 
but in its higher form, embodied in life, it in¬ 
stantly commands the belief of whoever looks 
upon it. 

But, it may be said in objection, belief in hu¬ 
man goodness is not belief in religion or in God. 
We answer, belief in human goodness is belief in 
religion, for goodness is religion; and further, 
belief in men is the first step toward belief in 


250 


A LIVING FAITH. 


God. “ He that lovetli not his brother whom he 
hath seen,” says the Apostle, “ how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen ? ” Just in the same 
way we cannot believe in God until we believe 
in man. It is the goodness that we see first of 
all in our mother and our father, and then in the 
other men and women around us, that enables us 
to conceive of God and have faith in him. He 
who greatly loves and believes in his fellow-men 
is not far from great trust and love toward God. 

The goodness that we see in those about us 
not only engages our trust, but excites a like 
disposition in ourselves. The contagious power 
of character is wonderful. It is not only that we 
set ourselves with deliberate purpose to imitate 
what we admire. There is a subtle influence 
that cannot be analyzed, by which goodness, as 
well as badness, communicates itself between 
those who are much together. Often a whole 
family may be seen to have caught in a degree 
some special excellence from one of their number 
in whom it was originally strong. In the shop, 
in the office, in the neighborhood, wherever peo¬ 
ple associate with one another, moral qualities 
communicate themselves and strike new roots, as 
a running vine spreads all over the ground about 
it. A sweet and noble nature cannot live in so¬ 
ciety without producing sweetness and nobility 


THE LIVING REVELATION. 251 

in others, any more than a fire can burn without 
giving out heat. 

This embodiment of truth in a living form 
is, according to Christianity, God’s own especial 
method. He made his highest revelation not 
through a philosophy or a code of laws or a book, 
but through a man. The truth was lived in 
Jesus Christ. “ The life was the light of men.” 
From the records of that life we draw our highest 
ideas of what man may be, and of what God is. 
And we are invited to personal companionship 
with the living Son of God, that through him 
our souls may receive Divine inspiration. 

But Christ’s revelation did not end with his 
own life. He laid it as his especial charge on his 
followers, that what had been begun in him 
should be continued through them. The light 
that had shone from his person was to kindle 
in each of their hearts, and shine forth there. 
What he had shown to the world in his life, 
they were to show, so far as was possible, in 
their lives. “ Ye are our epistle,” wrote the 
Apostle, “ the epistle of Christ, written not with 
ink but with the Spirit of the living God.” They 
were to be like planets, reflecting the light and 
heat they caught from the central sun. So, it 
is for every Christian to be a miniature Christ 
to those about him. If Christ “ dwells in our 


252 


A LIVING FAITH. 


hearts,” it is to be not as a solitary presence, but 
as a power to quicken and strengthen whoever 
we meet. 

Blessed power of goodness ! Out of the public 
view for the most part; in obscure lives ; among 
the poor, the ignorant, sometimes among the very 
outcasts; scorned by the great things of the 
world; unconscious of its own merit, and not 
dreaming of its own power — it is this divine 
quality in humble men and women and little 
children through which God reveals himself and 
through which he is re-creating humanity. 


XXXIII. 


THE KINDNESS OF NATURE. 

Men sometimes contrast the severity of what 
are called “ natural ” laws with the mercifulness 
of God’s spiritual kingdom. But to him who 
looks on the material world as belonging to the 
Divine order of things just as much as the world 
of spirit, such a contrast must be very unsatisfac¬ 
tory. It seems to be based on a false interpreta¬ 
tion of one side of the universe. There has been 
a morbid propensity among moralists to dwell on 
the gloomy side of life. In reality, we find in the 
operations of material nature, and in the ordinary 
course of human existence, indications of a won¬ 
derful and Divine kindness. Nature— using the 
word in a large sense — may be viewed as a most 
merciful and tender mother. 

We do not now speak of the general provision 
for man’s physical wants which the globe exhibits. 
Nor do we dwell on the lavish ministration to his 
spiritual nature through the senses, though that 
is very remarkable. From these great and ob¬ 
vious generosities of Nature, we turn to others 


254 


A LIVING FAITH. 


more delicate and hidden. Men speak of mate¬ 
rial laws as merciless. So in a sense they are. 
So is a railway train merciless if you put your¬ 
self across its track, but rightly treated it be¬ 
comes your servant. Just as fast as we under¬ 
stand and obey material law, it becomes our 
friend. But that is not all; it befriends us with¬ 
out waiting for our obedience. Let the body re¬ 
ceive an injury, less than mortal, and what fol¬ 
lows ? Before the swiftest foot can bring the phy¬ 
sician, Nature has begun her healing work. The 
physician is at best only her humble assistant. 
Medical science is learning more and more to 
trust to the vis medicatrix naturce — the healing 
power of Nature. It is she, whom we call stern 
and merciless, that knits together the broken 
bone that no artificer on earth could mend. It is 
she that deftly works out of the system the in¬ 
jurious matter which we in our ignorance have 
forced upon it. She is not only kind when we 
obey her ; she repairs our mistakes and heals the 
hurts we have done ourselves. Is not this the 
very counterpart of what the Divine Physician 
does for our spirits ? 

So, again, take an instance from the workings 
of that larger Nature in which is included the 
whole course of life and society. Consider the 
kindness and helpfulness of Time. We speak of 


THE KINDNESS OF NATURE. 


255 


him as the destroyer, and picture him with his 
scythe sweeping away all that man would pre¬ 
serve. But, on the other hand, what a healer 
and restorer is Time! As we grow older, we see 
nothing more plainly than this: that wounds of 
the spirit which to youthful eyes appear incura¬ 
ble are most gently soothed and made whole by 
the passing years. Under the old scars flows 
again the calm, healthful tide of life. Nowhere 
more plainly than here is it seen how much better 
God’s ways are than man’s thoughts. Under a 
great loss, the heart impetuously cries that it can 
never be happy again, and perhaps in its desper¬ 
ation says that it wishes never to be comforted. 
But, though angels do not fly down to open the 
grave and restore the lost, the days and months 
come as angels with healing in their wings. 
Under their touch, aching regret passes into ten¬ 
der memory; into hands that were empty, new 
joys are softly pressed; and the heart that was 
like the tree stripped of its leaves and beaten by 
winter’s tempests, is clothed again with the green 
of spring. 

Time does indeed take away some things which 
in this world he never restores or makes good. 
It would be idle to say that life is a steady pro¬ 
gression in happiness. But it is most certain 
that in the natural course of things a healthy soul 


256 


A LIVING FAITH. 


grows continually richer until its latest day on 
earth. Mourning over departed youth as better 
than anything which conies later is either a mis¬ 
take or a pitiful confession. Middle life ought to 
be richer, fuller, better than youth, and later life 
should be more blessed than middle life. Our 
most precious possessions are those which are 
within us, and these should become greater with 
every year we live. The energy, the freshness, 
the ardor of youth are good things; but better 
still are the tempered strength of experience, the 
self-knowledge and self-control, the gentler tem¬ 
per toward others’ faults, the deeper knowledge 
of others’ goodness, the humility, the trustfulness, 
the mellowness of spirit, that years bring to him 
who lives rightly. If intellectual wisdom were 
all we got in place of what goes with youth, we 
might indeed mourn over the exchange. But it 
is our own fault if as years go on we do not also 
reach a riper character, a larger love, a serener 
faith. Shall we call Time our enemy when he 
brings such gifts as these ? Rather, he is our 
best friend. 

One word is perhaps of all others most closely 
identified with sorrow and with loss — and that is, 
Death. But think, in the first place, of those to 
whom life at last comes to be a burden. Think 
of those who linger in acute suffering; of those 


THE KINDNESS OE NATURE. 


257 


who have outlived the use of their faculties; of 
those who have wasted their whole stock of op¬ 
portunities. Think of the countless many to 
whom from one cause or another this life has be¬ 
come simply a thing to be endured. Blessed 
surely is the messenger that comes to set them 
free! There is no pain, no sorrow, no long en¬ 
durance, that has not set before it at last this 
door of escape. If we think of Death only as a de¬ 
liverer from this life, we must say that to very- 
many he comes as a heaven-sent friend. But if 
we think of death as the entrance to a higher ex¬ 
istence, it is not the unhappy alone to whom it 
stands as a gate of promise. No one finds in this 
life all that he wants. And those who find here 
the deepest happiness find in it a symbol of some 
higher good beyond. The best that this life has 
to give — its clearest vision, its inmost sweetness, 
has in it the assurance of something beyond, the 
foretaste of eternity. 

And yet, men shrink from death, because be¬ 
side its gate sits Fear. And religion, as it has 
been taught, has not driven fear away; has, 
rather, to the majority of men, made it more 
dreadful. Yet an Apostle wrote, “ Perfect love 
casteth out fear.” And another Apostle wrote, 
“ Love hopeth all things.” 

Not only as to death, but as to all the experi- 
17 


258 


A LIVING FAITH. 


ences of life, it is possible to interpret on the 
gloomy or on the hopeful side. Have we in the 
religion of Christ any warrant for leaning to the 
one or the other tendency ? Certainly the teach¬ 
ing and life of Christ set the whole of existence 
in intenser colors. The good appears to be bet¬ 
ter, the bad appears worse, as we are baptized 
more deeply into the spirit of the Master. And 
so life does not take on a purely holiday aspect 
to his disciples; they lose something of the un¬ 
thinking jollity that was possible to men while 
they had not grasped the meaning of moral good 
and moral evil, and were by so much nearer to 
the animals. Christ has set us to do battle with 
evil, and while the battle is waging we cannot 
see the field in rosy colors. But when we ask 
ourselves whither this is all tending, whether we 
are to interpret life by a principle of hope or of 
dread, the Divine voice is clear. We need to 
enter into the full meaning of Paul’s great utter¬ 
ance, “ Now abideth faith,hope, love, these three; 
but the greatest of these is love.” Hope is set 
in the immortal trinity that is exalted above 
knowledge and tongues and prophecies, above all 
other gifts and graces. She has been the latest 
of the three to have her place recognized by men. 
But the three are inseparable. The greater our 
faith the greater will be our love, for the more 


THE KINDNESS OF NATURE. 


259 


we believe in God the more we shall love him. 
And as we have loving faith toward God, and so 
recognize true goodness as the dominant power 
in the universe, our hope for mankind must be¬ 
come large and sweet and sure. 


XXXIV. 


WAITING ON GOD. 

The best commentator on the Bible is experi¬ 
ence. It is very well to study it as we do other 
books, from the outside. But no one really knows 
what its treasures are who has not been driven 
to find them by some stress of actual need. The 
longer a man lives, and the more he learns of 
what joy and sorrow and triumph and tempta¬ 
tion and life and death really are — the more 
he will find in the Scriptures the voice of God, 
speaking with power the very word his soul needs. 

There is one experience that in some form or 
other is universal. It is the powerlessness of 
man to overcome circumstances. Every one, 
sooner or later, finds himself wholly unable to 
reach something that is to him supremely desira¬ 
ble. It is not only our selfish desires that are 
thwarted; we see things that we know are good 

— health, peace of mind, the power to help others 

— put away out of our reach. That hard expe¬ 
rience sometimes comes home to every one. 

There is nothing so mysterious, so awful, and 


WAITING ON GOD. 


261 


at times so inciting to despair as the iron wall of 
circumstance that shuts us all in. Be we ever so 
pure in our intentions, strong in our wills, full of 
inward resource and power — there rise before us 
barriers high as heaven, that we may not pass. 
It is infinitely touching to think of those whose 
whole lives are cast under bleak skies from which 
the sun seems hardly ever to shine. Here are 
two women in a lonely New England farm-house. 
One by one, father, mother, brother, sisters have 
passed away, leaving them each time more soli¬ 
tary than before. Sickness has fallen on them, 
misfortune has fallen; the narrow walls of a mo¬ 
notonous existence have shut in closer and closer 
— what cheer is there for them ? 

Or, think of the men of strong mind and soul, 
whose whole longing is to serve their fellow- 
men, but whom some strange fate holds inactive. 
Sickness disables them, or undeserved reproach 
has denied to them a hearing, or no door of op¬ 
portunity is open to them. 

Then, again, consider how the slow progress of 
the world weighs on the hearts of men who live 
for their kind. The Apostles looked at first in 
eager joy for the swift consummation of Christ’s 
kingdom even before their generation should pass 
away. Who can tell with what disappointment 
they came to feel the great immovable mass of 


262 


A LIVING FAITH. 


human ignorance and indolence and wickedness, 
that was only faintly stirred by their life-labors ? 
That experience has been to some extent repeated 
in the case of every reformer and prophet of a 
better day. In glorious vision he sees the New 
Jerusalem as if just descending out of heaven — 
and then the age moves on its slow, slow course, 
and the celestial city shines still afar off. 

We have taken marked examples of the disap¬ 
pointment and frustration of men’s wishes. But 
in lesser ways the same thing comes home con¬ 
tinually to everybody. Life is full of unsatisfied 
desires. 

To this longing for what we cannot reach, with 
what wonderful power comes the voice of the 
Psalmist, speaking again and again the same deep 
word of peace, “Wait on the Lord!” “Rest in 
the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” “ Com¬ 
mit thy way to the Lord ; trust also in him, and 
he shall bring it to pass.” “Wait on the Lord ; 
be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy 
heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” 

That word, Wait on the Lord , breathes into 
our eager, impatient lives something of the peace 
of eternity. For eternity is ours ; the Eternal 
God is ours! 

The walls that lie across our paths, the circum¬ 
stances that hem us in, are a part of a Divine 


WAITING ON GOD. 


263 


plan, which stretches through boundless time. 
And just as its vastness is too great for our 
thought or imagination, so its object is something 
better than we can even in our best moments be¬ 
gin to comprehend. It doth not yet appear —it 
did not appear even to the inspired John — what 
we shall be when God has wrought his work in 
us. The fairest vision of a redeemed universe 
which ever rose upon the mind of man is less 
fair, its brotherhood of all living things less per¬ 
fect, its love and light and glory less radiant, 
than that real universe which God is developing, 
and of which he is framing us to be a living part. 
And everything that exists is molded of his hand 
to forward this work. If the clay may not say 
to the potter, What makest thou ? it is because 
the thing which the potter makes is good beyond 
the clay’s power to understand. 

The things, then, which are hard for us to 
bear are the means through which our Father is 
working out a great good to his children. Nor 
are we to feel our present selves, our present 
hopes and joys and cares, swallowed up and lost 
in a vast scheme whose immensity overwhelms 
us. God has indeed a work that reaches through 
eternity, and includes all things in its scope; 
but none the less his heart responds to each 
smallest momentary need of his creatures. Be- 


264 


A LIVING FAITH. 


cause a mother’s thought for her child reaches 
forward to its mature life, does she any the less 
minister to its daily wants and tenderly consider 
each childish feeling ? “ Like as a father pitieth 

his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
him ” — like, but as much more lovingly and ef¬ 
fectually as God is more than man. 

The most wonderful element in the religion of 
the Scriptures is its peace. We find it in psalms 
and in prophecies ; Christ’s whole life is radiant 
with it; it underlies all the fervor and activity 
of his Apostles. Everywhere its ground is the 
same. Man is the child of God. The everlast¬ 
ing arms are under him. All things work to¬ 
gether for good. All things are ours, life and 
death, things present and things to come. God 
is for us; who can be against us ? 

Here is the ground of infinite patience. Pa¬ 
tience, not to submit to what is inevitable, be¬ 
cause we cannot help ourselves; but the patience 
of sure and joyful hope. “ Wait on the Lord ; 
be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy 
heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!” 


XXXV. 


THE REVEALING DAY. 

One sublime image in the Scriptures has taken 
strong hold of the imaginations and hearts of 
men. It is that of a great Day of Judgment, 
when, in the sight of the universe, every wrong 
shall be righted, and perfect justice be awarded 
to all. Toward that day have looked, with unut¬ 
terable longing, myriads who have suffered under 
the strange and seemingly unequal conditions of 
this life. The promise of it is the Divine re¬ 
sponse to the yearning of the heart to see right 
and justice enthroned over the earth. 

In thinking of that coming day, we are on the 
one hand to rise above the material imagery by 
which a great spiritual fact is veiled. We are not 
to expect a literal coming of the Almighty upon 
visible and substantial clouds, and with audible 
peal of trumpets, or a literal marshaling of the 
generations of men upon some great plain. But 
we are to rest in full assurance upon this : that, 
in the future life, there will be to us a disclosure 
full and wonderful beyond our power to imagine, 


266 


A LIVING FAITH. 


of the regulation of the universe by divine and 
perfect justice. 

It is not to be supposed that the Almighty 
does in any wise postpone to some distant time 
the right adjustment of affairs. He does not, 
like a human creditor, let an account run for a 
long time without a settlement, and then clear it 
at a stroke. His justice is eternal and constant. 
He is always administering the world in right¬ 
eousness. What the future will bring will be not 
a change on his part, not a remedying of what 
he has before let pass, but an opening of our eyes 
to what he has always been doing. 

One of the noblest scenes of the Old Testa¬ 
ment is that described in the sixth chapter of 2d 
Kings. In the night, the king of Syria with a 
mighty host encamped about the town where 
dwelt the prophet Elisha. In the morning the 
prophet’s servant went out and returned in ter¬ 
ror with the news. “ Alas, my master ! how 
shall we do ? ” And Elisha answered, “ Fear 
not; for they that be with us are more than they 
that be with them.” And he prayed, saying: 
“ Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may 
see.” And the Lord opened the eyes of the young 
man, and he saw : and, behold, the mountain was 
full of horses and chariots of fire round about 
Elisha. 


THE REVEALING DAY. 


267 


“ Open our eyes, that we may see ! ” That is 
the only prayer we need to utter when troubles 
like a host encamp against us. The horses and 
chariots of fire are about us before we pray. The 
Lord’s guardianship never fails. All we need 
for our comfort is to know that he is there. And 
the light of the great day will show this: that 
the whole course of the world’s history, and every 
moment of each man’s life, has been under the 
superintendence of perfect goodness. 

That day will fulfill the longing desire of men’s 
hearts in this, that it will vindicate the ways of 
God. That which now we take by faith will 
then be clear to sight. That vision will fill the 
soul with satisfaction unutterable. For that 
men have hungered supremely. “ Shall not the 
Judge of all the earth do right ? ” The cry has 
echoed from Abraham’s time down through every 
generation. It is the burden of the highest souls 
whose experience is recorded in the Old Testa¬ 
ment. It is the cry of Job, crushed less by the 
loss of all he had than by the doubt of the Al¬ 
mighty’s goodness. The Psalmist sings in clouds 
or in sunshine, as he is perplexed by the Lord’s 
mysterious dealings, or uplifted into a sense that 
his justice is sure. We feel the greatness of 
Christ in nothing more than this, that he stands 
in an atmosphere serene and radiant with the 


268 


A LIVING FAITH. 


conscious presence of the Father. Here the New 
Testament gets its key-note of triumph. Yet, 
over and again, in every man’s experience, comes 
the cloud and doubt. Blessed are they who have 
not seen and yet have believed; who build their 
lives oa this rock, — faith in a righteous God. 

That faith shall be more than justified when, 
beyond these shadows, we stand in the light. 
Then we shall see that the ways of God were 
“ dark from excess of light; ” that they were 
mysterious because we could not comprehend the 
transcendent purposes of good which inspired 
them. We are here, as some # one has said, like 
tiny insects creeping upon a great picture, unable 
in a lifetime to traverse an inch of the canvas; 
how should we comprehend the glorious beauty 
which the artist has wrought ? We shall know, 
in that day, that every calamity that swept away 
life or happiness, every blow that smote the heart 
and emptied the life, was love’s messenger. 
What utter humility and tenderness of gratitude 
will fill i^s as we see that when we seemed ut¬ 
terly forsaken we were enfolded in our Father’s 
arms! And what joy will be theirs who then 
can say: “ While yet we did not see thee, we 
trusted thee.” 

The great disclosures of the future life will ex¬ 
tend not to God’s ways only but to our own lives 


THE REVEALING DAY. 


269 


also. We shall see then a significance of good 
and evil in our acts which now we only dimly 
feel. No man sees more than the beginning of 
the outworking consequences of his actions. We 
are like men toiling in the dark, who know not 
their own work until morning breaks upon them. 
There seems strange inconsequence, strange con¬ 
fusion, in the progress of human lives. The prizes 
appear to fall often to the wrong ones. The best 
people are sometimes buried in obscurity. Those 
who stand high in power, in fame, in the things 
which men most desire, are often of coarse and 
base natures. Even the nobler goods of life, 
peace of mind, conscious harmony with other 
lives, the power of conferring happiness, fall 
often in ways strangely disproportioned to ap¬ 
parent desert. One man sees himself a great 
benefactor because nature has given him talents, 
or circumstances have given him wealth ; another, 
of purer and nobler purpose, finds himself shut 
off from any visible opportunity of usefulness. 
One man of selfish and animal disposition is al¬ 
ways happy, because he has inherited a sound 
body and a cheerful temperament, while a saint 
is tortured by hypochondria. Life is full of such 
incongruities. 

But, underneath this seeming chaos, discerned 
only by glimpses, works steadily and forever the 


270 


A LIVING FAITH. 


Divine law —goodness is blessed, sin brings evil. 
The ways in which that law works itself out, 
without one failure, will be clear to our eyes 
hereafter. We are sowing wheat or tares every 
hour, and we go our way, and know nothing of 
what follows. Some day, in God’s time, we shall 
see the harvest. No miracle is wrought, but 
every single seed brings forth after its kind, and 
as we have sown, so we reap — golden grain of 
ennobled character, of other lives blessed and set 
in their turn upon a work of blessing, of joy and 
peace and life ; or, miserable weeds of blight and 
sorrow and death. 

We are like workmen set each by the architect 
upon some single bit of carving. One has given 
him to fashion a fragment where incompleteness 
breaks a promise of beauty. Another has set him 
only level lines and surfaces of blank monotony. 
To one it falls to carve a head without a body; 
to another, a lovely face; to another, a grotesque 
visage; to most, patterns seemingly of little 
grace or meaning. But the task of each demands 
long labor and utmost care. At last, the various 
blocks are put together, and lo, there rises a glo¬ 
rious cathedral, filling eye and heart with its 
majesty and loveliness, stirring the soul with 
heavenward motions, destined to draw to it and 
shelter within itself one generation after another 
of devout worshipers. 


THE REVEALING DAY. 


271 


So, the temple of the living God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, is building through the ages. Who¬ 
ever in high place or in low is living the life of 
fidelity and love is carving a stone for that fabric. 
The pattern for his work is given by the Master 
in the heart of every one. Be patient, and hope 
to the end. The morning shall dawn, when the 
Lord shall show to our longing eyes that for 
which we have waited, and the fulfillment shall 
transcend our highest hope. 


XXXVI. 


THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 

No scenes in the Gospel narrative are more 
impressive to the imagination that those which 
represent the appearances of the risen Christ. 
In the accounts of the different Evangelists there 
is a noticeable want of consistency. It is difficult, 
and perhaps impossible, to make a connected and 
harmonious story out of the various fragments. 
But as we read we forget all minor points of crit¬ 
icism, so strongly do these living pictures take 
possession of us. Such, for example, is the story 
of Jesus disclosing himself to Mary Magdalene, 
as it is given in the twentieth chapter of John. 
With this should be united as a companion-piece 
the scene between Jesus and Mary at the Phari¬ 
see’s table, described in Luke vii. 36-50. I know 
of nothing in literature that to me is equal in 
beauty, pathos, and sublimity to these two scenes. 
So, again, of the conversation between Jesus and 
Peter by the sea of Galilee (John xxi. 15-17), 
and the appearance to Thomas (John xx. 25-29) 
— each of them embodying one of the deepest 


THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 


273 


sayings of the Master. But the scene of which 
I wish especially to write is that described in 
Luke xxiv. 13-32 : — 

“ And behold, two of them went that same day to a vil¬ 
lage called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about three 
score furlongs. And they talked together of all these 
things which had happened. And it came to pass, that 
while they communed together, and reasoned, Jesus himself 
drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were 
holden, that they should not know him. And he said unto 
them, What manner of communications are these that ye 
have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad ? And the 
one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said 
unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast 
not known the things which are come to pass there in these 
days ? And he said unto them, What things ? And they 
said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was 
a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the 
people : and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered 
him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. 
But we trusted that it had been he which should have re¬ 
deemed Israel : and beside all this’, to-day is the third 
day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women 
also of our company made us astonished which were early 
at the sepulcher. And when they found not his body, they 
came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, 
which said that he was alive. And certain of them which 
were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even so 
as the women had said : but him they saw not. Then he 
said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all 
that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory ? And 
18 



274 


A LIVING FAITH. 


beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded 
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning him¬ 
self. And they drew nigh unto the village whither they 
went: and he made as though he would have gone farther. 
But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it 
is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went 
in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at 
meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, 
and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they 
knew him ; and he vanished out of their sight. And they 
said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us 
while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened 
to us the Scriptures ? ” 

It has seemed to me that this story may be 
used as a parable to represent what is now going 
on among us. The dark days which fell upon 
the disciples between the crucifixion and the res¬ 
urrection have their analogy in every eclipse of 
faith which falls upon men. Many earnest souls 
are now going through an experience of this 
kind. Taking the world at large, it may be said 
that there is to no small extent, among the more 
intellectual class, a weakening of definite relig¬ 
ious convictions — a degree of uncertainty or even 
disbelief as to what has for many centuries been 
held as divinely revealed truth. Nor is this 
eclipse of faith to be treated, in most instances, as 
the outcome of wickedness or indifference. The 
remark has been widely quoted, that the prev- 


THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 


275 


alence of unbelief at this time is due to the 
want of moral earnestness in leaders of thought. 
I think nothing could be farther from the truth. 
The unsettling is largely owing to a special im¬ 
pulse of moral earnestness in the line of resolute 
truth-seeking. New light has been thrown upon 
many subjects by the discoveries of natural science 
and of history. A wide and intense mental ac¬ 
tivity has sprung up in regard to all classes 
of topics. In connection with this, there is a 
disposition to probe to the bottom of religious 
beliefs, to rest content with no doubtful or second¬ 
hand assurance, to get as nearly as possible to 
the inmost truth of things. A part of the 
deepest moral life of the time is throwing its 
energies into this channel. There is unsettling 
and groping, there is temporary pain and tem¬ 
porary loss even, but the governing impulse is a 
noble one. It is a cry for truth. It is to just 
that spirit that the promise “ Seek and ye shall 
find; knock and it shall be opened ” is ad¬ 
dressed. 

But, for a time, as incident to the great move¬ 
ment, many souls walk more or less in darkness, 
because they have lost their old sure faith. They 
do not belong to the shallow class who think it a 
mark of superiority to disbelieve; nor to those 
short-sighted ones who easily let go of old truths, 


276 


A LIVING FAITH. 


having no conception of their value. These others 
have come to doubt or disbelieve because they 
could not be false to their highest sense of truth ; 
because they could not stifle thought and reason 
even to win spiritual peace. They are as sincere 
as the disciples who mourned their slain Lord as 
they walked toward Emmaus; and they are as 
sorrowful. Those who have never doubted, and 
speak in easy condemnation of infidels and un¬ 
believers, have no conception of the sorrow with 
which an earnest nature sometimes gives up its 
old convictions. There is perhaps no tragedy on 
earth like that of a slain faith. What anguish 
in the words, “We trusted that it had been he 
which should have redeemed Israel! ” There 
are those who had seen in the Christian religion 
the promise of salvation for the world ; and now 
the foundations of that religion seem to them to 
be fading away before the remorseless light of in¬ 
vestigation, and they stand bereaved, desolate, 
helpless. “ Certain women,” they see, still cling 
to a blind, unreasoning hope — tender, believing 
souls, whose faith is born of their wishes — but 
to themselves, resolute to receive nothing but 
facts even though facts be wholly cruel, the dark¬ 
ness is unbroken. 

And, as they reason one with another, min¬ 
gling with their thoughts come utterances from a 


THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 


277 


Presence who is with them, yet unknown to them. 
Strange suggestions of hope break in upon their 
despondent words. Old promises come back with 
hints of new meanings, greater than the old in¬ 
terpretation. Out of the bountiful heart of Nat¬ 
ure, waking to new life with the returning spring; 
out of the rich and wonderful experiences of hu¬ 
man affection; out of sorrow; out of the very 
depths in which they cried, “ My God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ” —come inbreathings of celes¬ 
tial hope. They had stood in darkness and in 
cold — was it that deep and chilly darkness that 
heralds the morning ? Is yonder the day-star; 
is that the first faint flush of the eastern sky ? 
They know not—but their hearts burn within 
them. 

And the hour of full disclosure waits for us. 
No pen may tell of that. What did Cleopas and 
his companion feel, when there broke upon them 
the recognition of that unknown friend — when 
they saw again the dear face, whence through 
former days had shone upon them such blessing 
and peace, transfigured now by a new, celestial 
glory? None may tell what they felt. None 
may tell what is in any heart on which the Di¬ 
vine Presence breaks at last and scatters all 
darkness. To some, that disclosure comes while 
they yet walk the earth. To others, it waits on 


278 


A LIVING FAITH. 


the other side of that door of release which we 
call Death. 

Yet, well do we hope that the years will bring 
to this our familiar world of men, struggling now 
with all manner of confusion and uncertainties, a 
deep and sure sense of the Heavenly Father. 
Our struggle is our children’s purchase-money. 
Ours be it to faithfully follow on, though the way 
lead through sea and wilderness : theirs be it to 
possess the Promised Land. 

It was out of the darkness of the grave that 
Christ rose again to his disciples; it is out of 
pain and travail that new birth of truth comes 
always to the world. The Christ they gained 
back when he rose was more than the Christ they 
had buried. It was the Jewish Messiah they 
had given up as lost; but it was as the Saviour 
of mankind that Jesus came back to them. They 
had looked to him to overthrow the Roman do¬ 
minion, but it was a greater foe that he had van¬ 
quished — the terror of the grave and the curse 
of sin. Even so, when the Christ that now to 
some seems lost shall rise again and shine — 
when, out of the confusion and conflict of a 
thousand creeds, there at last comes forth to all 
men’s sight a belief worthy to be received — the 
new shall be fairer, sweeter, more glorious, than 
the old. 


THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 


279 


Take heart, all that commune together as you 
walk, and are sad. Take heart, all that sit in 
darkness mourning for your buried Lord. The 
night is far spent: the day is at hand. To you 
shall be fulfilled the Divine promise : “ I will see 
you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your 
joy no man taketh from you.” 


XXXVII. 


THE SOUL’S BIRTHDAY. 

When, beyond death, we come to ourselves, it is 
likely that nothing will surprise us more than 
our former dread of death. We shall see that 
we were like children in a dark room, fearing the 
door that led to the light. 

There come to us here times of emergence 
into new and higher experience, that typify what 
death will be. There are many persons who 
have a life-long desire to see Europe. It hangs 
like a vision above their common life. The Alps 
and glaciers, the historic cities, the great paint¬ 
ings and statues, the places of beauty and 
romantic association, haunt their imagination. 
Such names as London and Edinburgh and 
Venice and Rome have a magic sound to their 
ears. At last, after half a life-time, the day of 
good fortune comes. They stand on the ship’s 
deck; they are really going to Europe! 

There were thousands of souls that bowed 
under the yoke of slavery, sighing for release, 


THE SOUL'S BIRTHDAY. 


281 


trusting that somehow the Lord would deliver 
his people, yet hardly expecting ever to see it. 
There came a time when from one cabin to an¬ 
other, and at midnight gatherings, the news was 
whispered that they were to be free. Then, 
while they hardly knew whether to believe, came 
suddenly the Union armies; the old flag waved 
again, and their slavery was ended forever! 

Two lovers grow so into one that life apart 
from each other is only half-life. But poverty or 
other circumstance keeps them apart for years. 
At last the wedding-day comes on. Ah, how 
slowly the weeks and months revolve! But it 
comes at last —the day of perfect union, of lives 
made wholly one, never again to be divided. 

All this, and more than all this, will death be 
to us. That day will be our freedom day, our 
bridal day, the day when we begin to live. Here, 
we are like birds tethered to the ground. We 
fly a little way upward, and are pulled down 
again. The best that is in us gets only half-ripe. 
The body clogs the soul. A wall of darkness 
shuts in all our knowledge. Our best affections 
are only half-fledged. Our most perfect joys end 
sooner or later in loss. 

This life may contain, and for most of us 
ought to contain, a great deal of brightness and 
happiness and present good. But, at its best, it 


282 


A LIVING FAITH. 


seems like a glorious suggestion of something 
better than itself. In our best moments here, 
we touch what we cannot hold. Swift transient 
experiences yield us glimpses of something far 
above our common lives. We breathe the air of 
a higher world. In our human affections, in our 
worship, in our enjoyment of beauty, in our 
sense even of bodily vigor, we get surpassing 
moments that are hardly here before they are 
gone. And these are all foretokenings of what 
we shall be when the shell of the chrysalis is 
broken. 

No man who is fit to live need fear to die. 
Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are ! How 
we shall smile at our vain alarms when the worst 
has happened! To us here, death is the most 
terrible word we know. But when we have 
tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliver¬ 
ance, a new creation of ourselves. It will be 
what health is to the sick man. It will be what 
home is to the exile. It will be what the loved 
one given back is to the bereaved. As we draw 
near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts, 
It is God’s great morning lighting up the sky. 
Our fears are the terrors of children in the night. 
The night, with its terrors, its darkness, its fever¬ 
ish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake 
it will be into the sunlight of God. 




















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